My first saturn

[long_arms]

Hello,

This was taken at 5 am yesterday morning. The planet was placed right next to a house and a streetlight from where I'd set up the scope.

I don't know whether it was the seeing that was bad or heat coming off the houses (or both) but the boiling was horrendous.

I really struggled to focus and my diy extension tube was a nightmare hence the low resolution.

Anyway I learned a lot, mainly that I need to capture more frames to get the noise down. I couldn't decide how higher gain to use, would you say its a bit overexposed here?

I know this isn't great but as it was my first time seeing the planet let alone imaging I'm quite happy!!

I'd stayed up all night after a much more pleasing result with a lunar mosaic () so just to see the planet was both a relief and a beautiful sight !

Think this is the best 1000 frames stacked (or thereabouts). Taken with my point grey firefly mono camera, with my 200p f/5 and the stock 2x barlow. Followed by some dodgy editing with gimp.

Thanks for looking and all suggestions for improvement reeeeeally appreciated.

Dan

[Josh Wilson]

Great result Dan. IMO it doesn't look overexposed or all that bad considering the seeing was bad. I can see that cloud band quite well actually.

Josh

[WaveSoarer]

That was worth staying up for. An excellent job Dan. Very nice indeed.

[Strath]

I think this is fantastic. I would be totally pleased if I could ever come up with something like this.