Another Saturn taken at 12/3/12

[tich]

After a bit of a nightmarish start to my night I did a capture of Saturn that I'm pretty pleased with. I haven't used the kit in over a month mainly due to weather or work so it was nice to eventually get to use it again.

Taken at 23:17 BST 12/5/12

The image is just stacked & sharpened & hasn't gone through any other image enhancements or been enlarged & I'm pretty pleased with the result. I also used a 3X barlow rather than using the two stacked 2X barlows that I usually use so I might have to get myself a decent 4 X Barlow sometime in the future.

I can see this being my new avatar..

[Space Cowboy]

Very nice sharp image! Conditions were pretty good last night thanks goodness!

[tich]

I've been climbing the walls every night wanting to go out but the weather soon put a stop to that. I've been running a few pictures through painshop pro i'm not sure if it's improved them or not though.

The 3X Barlow versions;

The two stacked 2X Barlow versions;

I managed a capture with one of its moons showing but as it was set at a brighter setting you can't hardly see any detail on the planet. The 3X barlow versions do look a lot sharper though so I can see me getting a decent 4X Barlow at some point although I haven't had any good results using a 5X Astro barlow yet.

[Kokatha man]

Hi tich - the first image is pretty good although the rest seem to have lost almost all their colour.....when I read posts like yours I occassionally respond to specific comments (only when I haven't done so for a while..!)

Stacking barlows isn't, imho, a terribly smart way to amplify your images (which you seem to have discovered anyway) but using an extension tube is a perfectly valid means of increasing the image scale without having to resort to a whole range of barlows - you can purchase extension tubes in both 2" or 1&1/4" varieties fairly inexpensively or if you have a crappy old barlow folks often remove the lens element and use these as extension tubes.

The TeleVue site has a set of graphs to indicate increases in image scale with various extension tube lengths and you can use these to get an idea of what you might expect...

You should easily be able to accomodate 3X from a 2X barlow using an ET, and possibly get 3.5X out of it also: having a 3X barlow also should enable anything up to 4-5X amplification, so you can see that it also minimises the number of actual barlows you need for a wide range of image scales.....that old maxim about "the less glass you have to pass" is a valid one and you'll find just about all folks who produce hi-res images use extension tubes extensively..! (pardon the pun!!!:))

[Clayton]

Nice shot Tich, and good advice from KM

There is not much colour in the first shot either once you try to play with the balance, so it may be worth playing with it at capture time ???

[tich]

Thanks for the advice, I do seem to have problems with the colour when I try to capture planets. Most of the time they end up looking orange in colour, Mars is usually the worse culprit. I do alter the saturation settings when recording each video but I still struggle to get that perfect image like I've seen some people post with a similar set up to mine. I might have another mess around with one of the images in Paintshop Pro & see if I can get any improvement from it.

(Edit)

I've messed around with the images in Paintshop Pro but I don't seem to be able to get any more colour out of them.

This of the first saturn image.

If anyone wants to mess around with them then feel free the top image is the original one.

The settings I used to capture were;

[Philips SPC 900NC PC Camera]

Frame Divisor=1

Resolution=640x480

Frame Rate (fps)=5.00

Colour Space / Compression=I420

Exposure=-5

Brightness=57

Contrast=47

Saturation=-65

Gamma=0

ColorEnable=255

BacklightCompensation=0

Gain=30

[Cloudwatcher]

I think that if you merge the last two images and boost the yellow a bit the result is quite pleasing colourwise......all a matter of personal preference really...........

probably look even better if properly aligned......

[pel]

Good job Tich.

I haven't managed to catch Saturn yet with my 200p, my house has been in the way. It's nice to see it is possible to get a good image out of it.

Perry.

[Kokatha man]

Good job Tich.

I haven't managed to catch Saturn yet with my 200p, my house has been in the way. It's nice to see it is possible to get a good image out of it.

Perry.

Easy Perry - just bulldoze the house....!:)