Saturn June 2nd Good seeing at last!

[Space Cowboy]

Best Saturn session of 2013 for me last night. Here is a quick process on my netbook. Colour QHY cam :

[t_ilan_s]

Wow great capture, lovely details in the ring and pole!

[Pete Presland]

very nice image,nice rings, belts and some super pole detail! what barlow were you using?

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks guys! Taken with 3x tv barlow Pete. 1.5x drizzle used.

Below is a derotation of 2 stacks in winjup. Need to get this data loaded up onto my pc tonight to give it a proper process.

[si@nite]

Looking really good Stuart nice work mate, maybe even better to come!

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks Simon yes hoping for even better as I've got several avis to cherry pick. Here is a polar projection of the above image showing the northern hex.

[SnakeyJ]

Looking very good Stuart - look forward to seeing the next stages on this data, lots of detail there in the rings and surface + great northern polar projection.

[Laurie61]

Seeing was decent last night Looks like you got the polar hexagon. Nice image.

[Ewan]

Nice going there Stuart good image.

Seeing was good last night & stars were very still but toothache won the day :-(

How long were your captures ?

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks fellas! Captures are 6 mins Ewan I only took one IR at the end of the night just concentrated on knocking out as many colour avis as possible given the good seeing, I'm thinking an animation might work as there may be enough surface detail.

Here is another image from a 3000 stack taken at 10.48pm. This is better than the above images I feel.

[jambouk]

Fantastic images.

What frame rate are you using, and are you using an IR cut filter?

James

[DrRobin]

Very nice Stuart, lots of great detail there.

Robin

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks James yes a UV/IR cut filter is essential. Frame rate varied between 35 and 50fps depending on the gain which was between 70 and 100%.

Cheers Robin!

Ok, I'm processed out for tonight so here is one final image comprising 20 mins of capture de-rotated in winjup. I love the smoothness of this image but the hex is not as sharp as the single avi image above.

[JamesF]

Very nice images there, Stuart. I'm off to Bordeaux at the start of next month and I'm hoping to get some imaging done there whilst Saturn is a few degrees higher than we get it here.

James

[Freddie]

Nice work there Stuart. Last one is the best for me.

[Ewan]

Stuart have you tried combining multiple channels together & using DeRotate ? ie 3 x R, 3 x G & 3 x B?

Got to say the colouring is pretty spot on i think & makes a great capture.

[Ewan]

Got to say the colouring is pretty spot on i think & makes a great capture.

Very nice images there, Stuart. I'm off to Bordeaux at the start of next month and I'm hoping to get some imaging done there whilst Saturn is a few degrees higher than we get it here.

James

Have a great trip James & may good weather be with you :-)

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks James. Very shrewd going south for a better elevation good luck with your French jaunt!

Thanks Freddie yep the last one is silky smooth but studying closely its detail is not as good so I may stick to working with single avis. De-rotating images works well with poor to average data but when conditions are good I feel the single avis win as adding others tends to degrade the detail.

Thanks Ewan I derotated 4 colour images together in that last image I assume thats what you mean?

[Space Cowboy]

Another image combining 2 stacks taken at 21.41 & 21.48 UT de-rotated.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Very nice results. I am amazed you can actually pick up the polar hexagon with a 10" scope.

[Naemeth]

Excellent planetary imaging there Stuart, the seeing was finally on side .

[theo]

Well done Stuart. Quality shots. Certainly your best this season.

Regards

Pete

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks Michael and Naemath!

Cheers Pete its so nice to have some good conditions after the dross we've had these past months. Red filter landed on my door step today (very impressed with modern astronomy) so will combine the mono and colour cam to produce some RRGB shots