First Saturn of the season Skymax 127

[bigal1]

Hi all well after months of missing out imaging Saturn due to its low position in the sky i decided to move my gear to my front garden lastnight in the hopes of getting a few images . Conditions were quite good for my area around 7-8 / 10 and i was able to capture a good few hours worth of data , i was quite suprised to see how large the planet was on screen ( last planet i imaged was Mars ) but also how dim it was even with my gain cranked up to the max and a little brightness which i dont normally use . Equipment used as always was a Skywatcher Skymax 127 , Philips Spc900nc webcam , 2x barlow plus extension tube mounted on a Cg-4 with motors installed . This image is the best one to come out of the night and consists of 3100 frames stacked @ 10fps captured using Sharpcap .

Regards Alan

[JamesF]

I think that's a pretty good result, Alan. It's not an easy target for a small scope at the moment, is it? I'm not at all surprised that you had to push the gain up so far with the barlow and extension. I've been trying to keep to more moderate gain settings (around 50-ish) and found that I couldn't get a stable image with an extension, nor with my Revelation 2.5x or Ultima 2x (actually 2.4x-ish) barlows. I had to drop back to a "true" 2x barlow without an extension to get a usable image with the gain around 50.

I'm having a bit of a break from imaging at the moment in favour of observing DSOs until Jupiter returns having spent most of the first third of the year at the laptop, but here's a temptation to have another try with higher gain settings now

James

[Space Cowboy]

Very nice image Alan, glad you got a good shot at the ringed one!

[Starlight 1]

Very nice Alan.

[todd8137]

Nice work