My best Saturn, March 19 2008

[themos]

I am so thrilled! The RA motor on the EQ1 has made the job so much easier. Anyway, this is from the £65 114mm f/8 Newtonian with a TV Barlow and the 740K ToUcam in "COLOUR RAW" mode and a Baader Infrared Block filter. Captured at 5fps with wxAstroCapture, stacked in Registax4 97 frames out of 561, 100% layer 6 of wavelets, resampled at 2x.

There's a few more avis to process, it's great seeing the Cassini division there.

saturn2155.bmp

[Tim]

It does make you go all tingly doesn't it when a beauty of an image pops out at you.

Now if you will just go the whole RAW hog imagine what awaits!!

thats a corker Themos, well done.

TJ

[themos]

That's from another avi I got tonight. I think it's better.

saturn2151.bmp

[Cloudwatcher]

Brilliant captures! Sharp & clear.

What I want to know is where do you guys find clear skies?

Cheers

CW

[legion48]

Great image Themos.

[themos]

Brilliant captures! Sharp & clear.

What I want to know is where do you guys find clear skies?

Cheers

CW

Thanks! The weather forecast from Met Office was solid cloud cover. I saw a hazy sky with some high cloud but decided to have a quick go anyway. I rushed the polar alignment (didn't even look through the finder or scope!) which meant that Saturn would keep wanting to travel down in the field of view. I ended up with the best imaging session of the last 12 months! I'll never rush polar alignment again. When I went to bed, it was still clear...

[jgs001]

Nice capture, that's come out really well.

[Sam]

Looking good Themos!. The second avi is starting to show quite a bit of detail. It's really satisfying when the sliders on the wavelets in Registax start showing the detail.

[beamish]

That 2nd image is a cracker Themos !!

Karlo

[themos]

I'm still processing the frames. I've knocked the (colour) .bmp frames out of the RAW for Colour CCD .avi video files (which are greyscale) with AviRaw. Then I used ninox to crop into new .bmp frames a 160x160 square centred on the planet. That makes Registax's job easier. I manually got rid of the .bmp files that were too motion-blurred or had sensor artefacts (sunspot-like blots). I am left with about 4000 frames and I want to make sure that Registax can order them in terms of quality. There should be a few hundred really good ones. Watch this space.

[themos]

Adding frames, from left to right : 117, 1285, 8572

And some hubris: If anyone can find a better looking Saturn from a 4.5" reflector, I'd like to know about it!

[Naz]

Bleeping mate, you have a great image from your scope, just proves you don't always need the latest hi-tech equipment, just patience and clear skies.

naz

[themos]

I was out again today, with the new finderscope on the 114mm Newt... I aligned scopes, I collimated, I polar aligned, I found Saturn, sorted the sidereal rate but could i get a picture on the laptop screen? No! Something kept slopping around and I couldn't keep Saturn on the chip. When I managed, it looked very faint. Looked up, cloud was everywhere! Oh well, you win some, you lose some. I don't want another night like tonight, too frustrating! Shame because the seeing looked alright.