Saturn 16 MAY 2013.

[budski]

Hi Guys, it's been a long time since I posted anything here on account of the so few clear nights. Last night was probably the clearest sky I've had in ages and no Moon glare to compete with.

In my location, Saturn's low elevation in the UK makes it suffer badly from the warm air rising from surrounding neighbours rooftops and smokestacks. Given the lighter evenings, this is probably as good as it's likely to get on this apparition.

I've done some experimentation with the ASI 120MM camera and the latest (Beta) 2.3 version of FireCapture testing out the 16 bit option. The RGB captures were 120 seconds at 60 fps on the usual C11/CGEM DX mount, f20~via TV 2.5 PowerMate.

Stacked in AS!2 then R6.

Having seen Darryl's superb effort a few weeks back I wonder if it's time to take up bee-keeping as a pastime...

Bud

[Pete Presland]

cracking image, very nicely done!

[JamesF]

Given the circumstances Bud, I think that's an excellent effort. I had wondered where you'd got to of late

I'd stay off the bee-keeping for the moment though. It's been a tough couple of years. I'm not sure some of my colonies will make it to the end of the season even now

James

[budski]

Hi James, well..... If Bee-keeping's a bad idea then I'm not sure what else I can do. Ah, I know...., perhaps I ought to get out a bit more and meet people.

Is Tony Blair still the Prime Minister?

[Kokatha man]

.....wait for old Jove Bud..!

As for your Saturn, even though I thought the scale was slightly "ott" for my personal tastes I can't see any reason to moan* and at 50% of the size you posted at with a little extra smoothing this image warrants real kudos, doubly so with your elevation and seeing etc situations.....I'd give it 3 salutes personally if SGL didn't act up with posting pecadilloes constantly!!!

* You'd probably be allergic to bee-stings and wind up in hospital if you became an apiarist..!

[Ewan]

Nice capture Bud, elevation is a real pain for us in the UK as is the weather but still hasn't stopped images like this rolling in.

[Jaykay495]

Great image!

[budski]

Thanks Guys, it's always good to get some feedback from fellow sufferers !

I ran a batch of images in that same session which were at native focal length (ie. f10) but only processed the 'big' (f25) one to see how it would compare with all the excellent work coming from non-UK locations. I guess my yardstick was to see if I could clearly discern the Cassini gap all the way round to the front of the disk. I managed this ok on the Red Filter but not on the Green or Blue.

It's reassuring to know that 2 years ago I would have given my right arm to produce results like this but we strive for perfection, eh?

I'll have a stab at the f10's later to see what they reveal.

Bud

[Space Cowboy]

Good effort Bud. Its a hard balance getting the cassini sharp but not losing the crepe. I would be temped to ease back on the sharpening a little.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Great image. I agree that backing off sharpening might improve an already great image