Second try at Saturn

[Stub Mandrel]

I stayed up last night and was rewarded by completely cloud free sky between 1:00 and 1:45. I've got the webcam up to 10 fps with without tracking I can only get 20 seconds of capture per run. It was worth it, although even through the eyepiece I could only find one moon it was much better seeing than when I last tried, and I had a better idea of what to do.

I decided to try stacking all of the video I took - just over 7,000 subs as I'm not expecting to pick out storms etc. as most of the time saturn was wiggling like an amoeba. I could see the darker northern hemisphere as the video was coming through, but I didn't expect to see a hint of the 'c-ring' so I'm quite pleased with the initial result. Now to find the best runs to stack and play with processing a bit more to see if I can get any more out.

[knobby]

Nice , especially without tracking ... Well done !

[Stub Mandrel]

This is a stack of about 200 frames and I used the 'derotation' feature of Astrostakkert, even though the frames aren't quite evenly spread over the time it has helped a bit.

[Leveye]

Excellent work! Try aligning and balancing the mount and scope some to achieve even longer centered tracking. 2 minute exposure lengths would yield even more amazing results for you I bet.

[Astrosurf]

Excellent job! Especially with no tracking. Plus the planet is quite low down and the atmospherics don't help.

Alexxx

[knobby]

I now Ive already commented on this , but it really is a great job considering the equipment used and the position of Saturn ! top job, well done