Saturn on a shoestring.

[Baz Pearce]

Hi Gang,

Surprisingly (or perhaps not, BBC forecast said light rain all night) had a clear sky shortly after midnight on Monday the 18th. I Set up to broadcast Saturn for a while with the 70mm refractor and 2.3X Barlow. Once in focus, i was quite pleased to find the seeing was steady, probably helped by the thin layer of haze. Captured 2 AVI files of 3000 frames at 10 per second. 1 with higher gain than exposure, and 1 the other way around. Had to balance the colour manually with the refractor. Captured with SharpCap, PIPPed with quality weighting set at 860 to give me just over 1500 frames, used just over 1000 for the final stacks. Quality percentages were in the high 80s. Srtacked with Registax 5.1, some more processing in GIMP with sharpen and a touch of unsharp mask:-

Higher Gain:-

Higher exposure:-

Then did a combination of the 2 without quality weighting:-

I'm hoping i can improve closer to opposition next month.

Once again, great forecasting BBC (NOT!!), as i continued to broadcast on until around 5am when my eyes were starting to close on me. lol

Baz.

[Stargazer33]

Nice capture, well done. I love the shadow of the disc on the rings!

You don't believe the BBC weather forecast do you?

[Baz Pearce]

Tee hee. No, i don't believe any forecasts. They're at it again tonight, website says cloudless skies from 10pm until 9am tomorrow. I use sat24.com's radar images and make my own mind up. As soon as i looked at it this morning i said to myself "Not a chance in hell!".

Baz.

[bm1980]

Nice captures with the refractor,

Regards

Ben

[JonnyN]

Looks great! Good job

[Baz Pearce]

Thanks guys . I'm pleasantly surprised at the way it stacked up. I think the colour may be slightly off, a touch less blue perhaps. I'm pleased to be able to get a decent image from an OTA that only cost £65 with a single outer lens coating. Gotta admit the camera has done a fantastic job for me. Considering the price a BNIB Philips costs nowadays. I got mine for £20.99 off fleabay just over 2 years ago, in tandem with the Baader IR cut filter (£36 used twice), they've proved time and time again that you don't need to spend a fortune to get into astroimaging.

Next i've got to wait for another good night for a go with the 130mm Newt. It will be interesting to see how it turns out with the extra 30% focal length and more light gathering power. Hopefully the image will have better colour balance and be a bit sharper. Then i will want my buddy to fetch his 127mm MAK over for a pop.

Baz.

[stellawolf]

Nice capture well done

[sologuitarist61]

Looking good - well done!