Saturn 28 April 2012 First Attempt

[Episkey]

Here's my first attempt at Saturn with my new Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000. Average seeing, good transparency. Saturn was about 30 degrees above the horizon so I definitely could improve. About 15 sec. captured in SharpCap and stacked in Registax 5.1. Levels/Curves adjusted in Photoshop.

As always any tips greatly appreciated.

[Clayton]

Nice start Episkey

Two things that might help.

1. A longer capture, 6min is no problem with Saturn (if you have a tracking mount??)

2. A bit more scale using a Barlow and perhaps some extension tubes between the Barlow and the Camera. ( again assuming you have a mount capable of tracking)

[Episkey]

Unfortunately I don't have a tracking mount. I'll try to get longer captures manually tracking, and I'll add a barlow. Thanks for the advice!

[ggreene1]

Here's my first attempt at Saturn with my new Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000. Average seeing, good transparency. Saturn was about 30 degrees above the horizon so I definitely could improve. About 15 sec. captured in SharpCap and stacked in Registax 5.1. Levels/Curves adjusted in Photoshop.

As always any tips greatly appreciated.

Can I ask you how you modded your Logitech ? I have one and would love to mod it to do some imaging. I would love getting any information from you on how you have it set up. Pictures would be fantastic.

[Episkey]

I removed the lens from the webcam first, then as a temporary setup I taped an old 1.25 inch eyepiece (lens' removed) barrel to the front of the webcam over the CCD chip. Then screwed into the focuser, and got Windows 7 on my Mac to run SharpCap, Registax, etc.