Saturn Lifecam montage

[JamesF]

The montage below contains images taken of Saturn with my 127 Mak. The top-left was taken with an SPC900 and 2x barlow three weeks ago. The remainder were all taken on the night of the 12th using a modded Lifecam and no barlow. I was experimenting with brightness and saturation settings to see what worked best.

I'm really not happy with the Lifecam yet. I think perhaps that Saturn isn't a good target to be testing on anyhow. This apparition it's hard enough with a camera I'm used to, let alone a new one that is somewhat idiosyncratic in its response to the controls. I've decided it's probably time to give planetary imaging a break for a while, do a bit of visual work and catch up on other things like tweaking my EQ3-2.

Anyhow, as they say in these parts. "yer 'tis"

James

[JonnyK]

Nice pictures!Im really struggling to image saturn with my 2x barlow. I have managed a nice un-barlowed image but I can never seem to find Saturn through the webcam any hints?I do find it easier to remove the stardiagnol when just using the webcam, would this be best with the barlow as well?

[JamesF]

I tend to leave the diagonal in because there's less chance of something falling out of the back of the scope if I do, but there's no real need for it if you can achieve focus without it (or with an extension instead).

I have a 12mm illuminated reticle eyepiece. My method is to start with a 32mm eyepiece, centre the planet, switch to the illuminated reticle eyepiece and re-centre, then put in the 2x barlow with the illuminated reticle ep and centre once more, then swap the ep for the camera. With the target perfectly centred that gets it on the sensor pretty much every time, even if I'm using a 3x or 4x barlow (though in those cases I often centre with the lower magnification barlows first).

Because the image won't be in focus, it helps to turn the gain/brightness up to maximum to find the image on the camera. If I was imaging last time I used the scope then when I'm centring the image with the reticle I don't even bother changing the focus, I just centre the fuzzy blob.

James