Saturn through a porthole June11th...

[Kokatha man]

Hi all, here are the Saturns I imaged through a lucky porthole in the clouds last Saturday.....wall-to-wall clouds every day and night but at around 7pm on Saturday evening a large porthole opened in the clouds and for the next 3 hours about 20% or so of the sky remained clear..!

The first hour wasn't useable as clouds just kept on manifesting out of thin air within this porthole (probably something to do with high water vapour content within the air...:)) but we managed some reasonable avi's.....transparency was down and the Puyehue volcano in Chile had our half of Oz covered in ash that shut our airports down the next day.....

I really suspect this ash in the atmosphere affected the ability to get decent colour balance in each image and made an animatiom well-nigh impossible.....well, that's my excuse:D:rolleyes: - but for a session of avi's with the planet around the zenith zone and unchanged colour-channel histograms for every single capture the variation in image colour straight out of rgb combine after Reggie6 was something I've never experienced to this degree before.....

Anyway, the storm head is still pumping itself along and I made an animation and other images where the only way I coulf find an acceptable comparitive colour rendering was to use an R-RGB luminance blend.....here's the best images and an animated sequence.....

ps: I'm waiting for the OTA parcel component of the VX16 from Orion Optics UK to arrive in Adelaide.....it seems to have gotten lost in Oz somewhere, whilst the primary mirror and cell is waiting for it here at the Adelaide depot....!:eek:

[Telrad]

Kokatha man, these are wonderful images of Saturn. I particularly like the ani, and the colour balance appears OK depsite you suspecting ash in the atmosphere. Well done! Thank you for posting these. Fantastic!

[Kokatha man]

Thanks Telrad, I wasn't unhappy with the colour renderings I used.....just so annoyed that it took so long to achieve it throughout the group of images I used: as I said, something was different from every other session - and between each capture as well (and it wasn't my settings!) - so I'm gunna blame Puyehue....!

To grab the detail I did at such a late stage in Saturn's apparition was a bonus, meaning seeing was pretty good; but I think the downside was the transparency...

[JohnnyD333]

Amazing photos from an amazing scope.

[SoulFrenzy]

thats amazing. really nice work there.

[johnh]

These are superb with banding and detail very delicate.

John.

[Kokatha man]

Thank you Johhny, S/Frenzy and John.....I'd like to work on the images a bit more when I'm a little more relaxed - the VX16 is now sitting in my studio after the OTA took an extra ride up Australia's East Coast....!:)

But unfortunately the secondary came unscrewed from the spider assembly and we found it rolling around inside the OTA....!:eek:

It isn't badly damaged but there are scuff marks on its surface..... a quick call to John at OOUK and he's promised to send another out asap as a replacement.

It will be a good 4 to 6 weeks before it'll get "first light" but we've already planned a long trip up into the Far North (cribbing another 10 degrees or so of elevation!) for around Jupiter's opposition....!

[Crunchard]

Glorious set of images, thanks for sharing

[Kokatha man]

Thanks also Crunchard.....here's a slight tweak of the best 2 imo.....

[blackparticle]

Those are really good.. And you can just about trace the Cassini division all the way around the rings.

[carastro]

Absolutely stunning images.

Carole

[inkpen]

Those are fabulous. From a newbie - what kind of magnification where you at there? (fingers crossed my first scope arrives from Aunt Flo tomorrow).

[Kokatha man]

Thanks b/p, Carole and i/p.....these images were taken using a Celestron C11 at approximately f25 (a 2x barlow with the extension above that obtained via the distance between the barlow and the camera via the filter wheel and connectors...)

I'm particularly pleased with these images, as although they're not my best from this apparition of Saturn because the transparency was definitely down on what I'd like (but seeing itself was good!) plus the planet is both dimming and shrinking as it motors away from us now.....it was just one of those lucky occassions when being set up regardless of how the weather was looking, you can sometimes jag some decent opportunities..!

[mag10]

Those images are exquisite!

The sharpness and delicate coulours.

I especially appreciate having Rhea there!

(I really like our planets, but for some reason, the moons of our solar system are absolutely fascinating to me).

Thanks, those images are amazing.

[astroeddie]

Beautiful images indeed.

The detail in the cloud patterns is fantastic, especially the Dragon Storm.

Thanks for sharing.

Eddie, awaiting a "Porthole" of his own

[Glasspusher]

Exceptional images, a joy to behold.

John

[Kokatha man]

Thanks Eddie and John.....usually one finds which avi's are the better ones and you process these first - from this night whilst making the images in R-G for a mono animation whilst the storm head was fully in view, I was pleasantly surprised to discover this evening that the rgb run preceding the 2 above was actually "better" with a more detailed/pronounced storm head "knot" - getting the colour exactly how I wish is a struggle, but I think by tomorrow when I'll have finished the mono animation I should get a set of rgb's (including this one!?!) adjusted to how I finally wish them to appear....!:)

[Scosmico]

Very nice pics.

[johnkirkpatrick]

Very nice !!

[Clayton]

That last image is a cracker Darryl

Even in spite of you getting the colour how I would like to

[Alan]

Another great set of images Darryl .. nice of God to open up the seeing window for you

Your Newt will certainly have its work cut out to beat your C11 !

Cheers,

Alan

[EssexGazer]

Incredible images:)

Andy

[wayneh]

one can only dream of taking pics as good as these ones....well done

[Rob]

What a joy to see these.. super details. Thanks for sharing, and very well done sir.

Regards

Rob

[Rob Severn]

Truly superb images, can't wait to dee what you do with Jupiter