Mini Saturn 11-04-2012

[Jupiterholic]

Whilst you can't deny the beauty of high magnification shots when it comes to planetary images, smaller scale shots have a real charm of their own I think and with the very low altitude of Saturn for us Northern hemisphere observers its sometimes the best option when you have a smaller scope aperture.

This was taken last night with a 1.75x barlow. Best 800 of 9,000 frames.

[kenmyers]

This is a really awesome little image.

The amount of detail captured is exceptional!

[Clayton]

Thats a lovely shot JH

[Alan]

Very nice crisp and detailed image and much better than any of my attempts (which I have kept to myself) this year

Alan

[starnut]

WoW that is very nice well done

[Ringrocket]

Beautiful,

I really like this image scale too !

Jeffrey

[Jupiterholic]

Very nice crisp and detailed image and much better than any of my attempts (which I have kept to myself) this year

ah yes, I know this scenario well. Hence the reason I have been a little thin on the ground with Saturn shots myself this year. I only just twigged the other day that by not pushing my magnification too much and going for stupidly long capture times (5 and a half minutes on this one) I could get better results. Guess that'll have to be the way I do it until we get higher apparitions with Saturn again. Unless I win the lottery and can afford a C-14....

Thanks for the comments everyone.

[neil phillips]

ah yes, I know this scenario well. Hence the reason I have been a little thin on the ground with Saturn shots myself this year. I only just twigged the other day that by not pushing my magnification too much and going for stupidly long capture times (5 and a half minutes on this one) I could get better results. Guess that'll have to be the way I do it until we get higher apparitions with Saturn again. Unless I win the lottery and can afford a C-14....

Thanks for the comments everyone.

Good result it isnt easy this year for sure, i dont think 5.30 is a long capture. saturn rotates slower than jupiter. 6mins is safe ground for saturn

Think i just fell in im guessing you was going for captures way above 5mins. actually thats ok too if your not worried about storm detail, as it will blur. but at low mag, maybe thats not a worry ?

[Jupiterholic]

Good result it isnt easy this year for sure, i dont think 5.30 is a long capture. saturn rotates slower than jupiter. 6mins is safe ground for saturn

Think i just fell in im guessing you was going for captures way above 5mins. actually thats ok too if your not worried about storm detail, as it will blur. but at low mag, maybe thats not a worry ?

Yes, I recall last year actually someone challenging me to try 6 minutes on Saturn but I was using an SPC900 and higher magnification and my polar aligning skills weren't very good back then so the drift was too much for 6.

I'm not really worried about storm detail as, like you say, at the mag I'm shooting at I doubt I'd pick up much anyway. Saturn's just so low this year I'm going to work on these smaller versions I think. I'll save the 3x Televue bad boy for another year! I envy those guys in the southern hemisphere.

[nightfisher]

really nice crisp image i really want to have a go at saturn with the 180 mak and webcam

[Atlas]

Very cool...nice shot.