Up at 3:30 for Saturn!

[Stub Mandrel]

I struggled to find saturn. It seemed to be too far west and too high. Came back in and looked at Stellarium and no it should be where I expected it to be, so went out again and it was there but a very faint dot, due to a layer of high, thin cloud.

Dragged the scope into the front garden. Polar aligned by eye, then discovered the scope was too far to one side so a streetlamp was shining on the front. Moved a yard or two so a tree gave me some shielding and realigned.

Through the eyepiece there was very little detail, quite disappointing after what I hoped for. The image was rock steady (the scope was nice and cool after half an hour's setting up), but blurred by the cloud.

On the screen it was very clearly saturn, but no detail except the holes in the rings. What surprised me was how steady the images were, much less of the warping and twisting - if only that darn cloud hadn't been there!

I took two sets of images, the first lot weren't quite as sharply focused as the second lot which were not as bright as they could be. Luckily stacking them all gave the best result. I only got three 17-second runs at the the second setting as cloud wiped oput the planet as I was setting up for the forth run.

Anyway this is what I got. The first one is softer but more naturally coloured, the second one I have tried to tone down, it seems to have gone a bit psychadelic.

Neil

[jambouk]

Are these individual frames or stacked images?

Can easily see the Cassini Division on both of them, well done

James

[Pompey Monkey]

Well done!

Unfortunately, Saturn is badly placed for UK (and other Northern Hemisphere) observers for the next few years and will be low in the sky even at transit

[Grotemobile]

Well done!

 

Unfortunately, Saturn is badly placed for UK (and other Northern Hemisphere) observers for the next few years and will be low in the sky even at transit

 

That is dedication being up at 3.30.

Well done. At least you have got some

picts.So Saturn is going to a bit of

a wash out for the next few years.

I used to like imaging that. Shame.

Steve

[Stub Mandrel]

Phew, I didn't realise it took hours to process a few minutes of video. I have discovered the 'saturn' check box in autostakkert, and the obvious difference is that the Cassini Division now runs around the front of the ring too. Definitely beats plastering a hole in the ceiling.

Neil

[mikeskor]

Good images. I, too, have gotten up early in the morning to image Saturn but so far have failed to pick it up when adding a barlow to the Zwo camera. Without the barlow, no problem but the image is too small to use.

[Stub Mandrel]

I use 25x with a 2x barlow to find the planet, swap to a 10x with the barlow to centre it and adjust the finderscope so its just in the 'armpit' of the crosshairs.

I find this much more relaible than getting it dead centre, as it then disappears!

[Astrosurf]

Good one for the difficult conditions!

Alexx