Saturn - Could be my only go this year ;)

[SnakeyJ]

Darned difficult this year - especially as it was skimming along the ridge of my roof and directly over the heat plume from my laptop.

Red and green not terrible, but blue was definitely nasty.

All taken around F15, with the Europa 250 and QHY5L-IIM.    

No cigar, but definitely a tick in the done this box

[Paul73]

Isn't the whole point of a laptop that is is moveable???

Still a pretty crisp image.

Paul

[jetstream]

Very nice image Jake.

[Tonynexevo925]

Deserves a cigar in my opinion

[Kokatha man]

Isn't the whole point of a laptop that is is moveable???

Still a pretty crisp image.

Paul

Maybe Paul was suggesting you could have climbed up on the roof & had a darn sight better view Jake...but tbh you've got me puzzled also: I've got one of those 4-chimney gaming lappys now & you should see the exhaust it belches out - best heat plumes since we inadvertently set up behind the banks of diesel generators at Yulara once..!

Of course you could light any cigars off of it also!

A good effort under very challenging conditions however!

[Pete Presland]

Great result. Not an easy target this year or last and even harder next year i believe!

[SnakeyJ]

Isn't the whole point of a laptop that is is moveable???

Still a pretty crisp image.

Paul

Fair point, but I set everything up on a granite top garden table adjacent to the mount - the USB cables were too short and the connections too tempermental to risk moving it [emoji3]

[si@nite]

A good effort Jake well done for getting out there, constant cloudy conditions will probably finish my attempts this season too!

[Paul73]

Fair point, but I set everything up on a granite top garden table adjacent to the mount - the USB cables were too short and the connections too tempermental to risk moving it [emoji3]

Spot the visual only guy here! I guess that we all work within the confines of our observing/imaging site.

Paul

[SnakeyJ]

Maybe Paul was suggesting you could have climbed up on the roof & had a darn sight better view Jake...but tbh you've got me puzzled also: I've got one of those 4-chimney gaming lappys now & you should see the exhaust it belches out - best heat plumes since we inadvertently set up behind the banks of diesel generators at Yulara once..!

Of course you could light any cigars off of it also!

A good effort under very challenging conditions however!

Cheers Darryl - a little altitude would definitely have helped the view, but I'll leave the roof climbing to the more nimble (and Rob!).

Might have some better seeing on Friday night, if the cloud breaks - so will setup with the table and laptop to the north of the mount.    I might even try and raise the tripod a little to improve the angles

[Virgoman]

Nice image Jake -  especially under such expletive inducing conditions! I feel your pain with the "Lord" at a head spinning 17 degrees here  . Saturn is teasing us!

                        Best regards,

                                               Ralph

[SnakeyJ]

Thanks Simon and Ralph, might even be a gap tonight with the promise of reasonable seeing from the Unisys 300mb chart!

[laudropb]

Nice image I spite of the conditions . Thanks for sharing

[Space Cowboy]

Good effort despite the hot laptop Jake! Surely in the summer that can't have any effect?

[SnakeyJ]

Good effort despite the hot laptop Jake! Surely in the summer that can't have any effect?

Not so sure on this and would need to find a stable bit of sky to confirm, but at 18 degrees everything is pitching around like wobbly jelly.     The vented air from the laptop was noticeably warm on my hand, with the aperture just above laptop screen height - so probably not optimal.

I'm out setup again tonight, but if anything the seeing is worse than last night and we have some cloud to contend with.     The laptop though is well off to one side, so if conditions allow I should get another few runs in to compare.

I've also installed another hard drive into the media bay on this laptop for capture, a 1TB Hitachi (HGST) - this was definitely playing up during processing last night, with AS!2 and PIPP struggling to multi task or do anything quickly - lots of ATAPI controller errors in the system log as well.   Tonight I've run HD Tune and this seems to be performing to spec, but perhaps the larger files are killing it or I have a dudd.

[slim80]

Still a nice image you have there

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice result