Saturn on 3rd May 2014

[davedownsouth]

Hi, attached is a GIF of my first nights attempts at imaging Saturn.  I have been waiting to try this for ~3 weeks, but the terrible weather has been a real drag .  Finally, last night was looking good, so I set out at ~11:30.  The attached GIF is made up of 6 combined RGB images, each which was a combination of 90 or 180 second exposure using the CCD / RGB filter set listed in my Signature.  I did not use a Barlow, as I had real problems trying to find Saturn with the 2x Barlow, so I think that is a job for another day.  I was surprised at how much harder is was to image Saturn compared to Jupiter.  I thought it would be easier to focus Saturn, what with the ring system and all to aim at, but I found focusing on the bands on Jupiter to be much easier.  Think the images are a bit over exposed, and still need to learn how to get the colour right after combining images, but was pleased to be able to pick out the Cassini division .

[oldpink]

thats really well done
some nice detail in the captures
how many frames did you use

[davedownsouth]

thats really well done

some nice detail in the captures

how many frames did you use

I have not quite worked out how the number of frames bit works yet?  As I said, some images were taken with a 90 second video, and some were taken with a 180 second video, but all videos ended up having between 490 and 650 frames in total (to me logic would say that the 180 second video would have twice as many as the 90 second one)???.  I am sure this is down to different exposure lengths, but I am sure at least one set of the 3 minute videos was taken with a high gain / short exposure setting?  

NB.  I got to what I have shown in the first post by:-

1.  Stacking the videos with Registax 6 using a keep the best 25% setting, and then messing about the wavelets thing.  (NB2.  Had to be a lot more 'gentle' here compared to a Jupiter stacked video or the image looked terrible).

2.  Centred the 3 generate RGB TIF images in PIPP (cropped to 300)

3.  Combined the RGB images in pixinsight.

4.  Tried as best as I could to get the colour of the combined images looking the same using pixinsight (I am on a steep learning curve with this bit, alot of randomly moving sliders to see what happens ).

5.  Made the GIF in Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 (the easiest part of the whole thing).

NB3.  I like the way the ring changes orientation as time progresses, probably ~80 minutes time difference from the first to last combined image in the GIF.  I guess this is all down to the AltAz type scope mount, and if I was using a polar aligned CGEM type, I just would not have got this effect and I could have used much longer exposures for each video.  Is this the right reason / explanation?

[davedownsouth]

As the weather was so rubbish tonight, I have had a play to try and improve the colour of one of the photos I made.  Think this one is better, but not much detail showing, hoping to get another chance to image Saturn towards the end of this week :-

[oldpink]

I'd be over the moon with that

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice work. Saturn is hiding behind trees as seen from my garden, so no luck yet