09/01/13 - 6:14GMT My "Second" Saturn

[CKemu]

I first observed Saturn back in January 2011, I had owned my telescope for about a month and barely used it due to weather and an initially broken DEC drive. Of course, eager and somewhat inexperienced I plugged my Nikon D300 and snapped some photos, only to be sorely disappointed:

Two years later, it's the same telescope, I've got more equipment, ranging from an Eq wedge, to barlows and filters and am generally starting to get to grips with more.

Last night I set my alarm for 4:00am, awoke only to see a thin cloud layer and laid in bed for 30 minutes fighting the urge to sleep watching to see if the sky would clear. They did. I dragged myself out and set my scope up, observing Saturn for about 30 minutes, I plugged in my Orion StarShoot Solar Colour Imager IV (SSSCIV) and got my first ever view of Saturn on my laptop. Recording 3000 frames, I then attached a 2x barlow and carefully centered Saturn, attached the camera,...nothing!

I carefully went through the full focal range of my telescope, nothing, I set exposure and gamma to the extreme, re-centered, nothing! Frustrated I went back to prime and it was there, this went on for about an hour, with the 2x, 3x barlows and every time I had a barlow in play, Saturn wouldn't show. I did at one point get it to show at 2x, even seemed reasonably bright (f/20) and noticed that the image would flicker in and out, like every few frames it simply couldn't detect Saturn.

Seeing was bad, Vega and the eventually rising moon rippled madly and Saturns rings danced constantly.

So the below image is from the single 3000 frame capture I took, focused by eye and stacked using Registax with a Smart sharpen filter applied in photoshop.

Optical Chain: SSSCIV > Meade LX90 8" SCT > British Winter Atmosphere > Space > Saturn.

[sparkyjon]

Stunning..

[CKemu]

Thank you! This is the "raw" video footage I worked with:

[Kokatha man]

IOptical Chain: SSSCIV > Meade LX90 8" SCT > British Winter Atmosphere > Space > Saturn.

Shouldn't that read "Sun > Space > Saturn > Space > British Winter Atmosphere > Meade LX90 8" SCT > SSSCIV....?"

Nonetheless, a meritous effort in the circumstances!

[Space Cowboy]

Very good image under the circumstances! Saturn is really tough being so low and especially in poor seeing. Did you use wavelets in Registax?

[CKemu]

I've never been able to get along with wavelets in Registax, I decided against even attempting to use them on this run. I find Photoshops "Smart Sharpen" to be more intuitive than Registax's wavelets. It's like no one can actually tell you what they do specifically, we know they sharpen, but a tool who's best advice is generally "to play around with them", is hardly a tool, that's like throwing rocks at a pond to go fishing.

I really enjoyed the challenge of getting Saturn, didn't enjoy the early start quite as much, but still - well worth it.

Shouldn't that read "Sun > Space > Saturn > Space > British Winter Atmosphere > Meade LX90 8" SCT > SSSCIV....?"

Nonetheless, a meritous effort in the circumstances!

Haha! I like that Oh and thank you