Saturn skulking at 14 degrees

[Tommohawk]

Was in two minds whether to bother imaging Saturn from my garden because I cant see south that low. Right now Saturn just about appears at 1 am and by the time I'm focussed its just 14 degrees altitude. And even that required some frantic midnight hedge clipping so I could shove the rig to the best possible position. No idea what the neighbours must have thought.

What made things even worse was that Saturn emerges from behind the trees over the top of my single storey extension, so the heat from the roof was phenomenal - its amazing the software can extract any detail at all under these circumstances. 

So I did 3  x 2 minute runs for each of RGB, no prospect of any longitudinal detail so I just joined all the files of each colour in PIPP, took the best 50% (of 22000 frames for R, and rather less for G and B), stacked in AS!2 and used the best 30%, registax, then align and fiddle in PS.

Need to have another go from better site - if time and weather allow!

Quattro 10S with ZWO290mm + TV powermate x5. 

[Stephen Green]

That is a nice image in this heat

[MarsG76]

Nice for a low altitude image.

[Davey-T]

Pretty good considering Tom, I've had a couple of goes but not got anything worth processing, also only get a small window between trees.

Dave

PS: Are you popping up at the weekend ?

[si@nite]

Thats a respectable image at this low alt considering your location also, i have a similar problem getting a gap in the tree line long enough to get a few runs off!

[morimarty]

Yep as above thats a very respectable Saturn image Tom. especially considering what you had to go through just to get it on the camera chip in the first place.

[Rob]

Like this.. and oh yes how we have all hedge clipped at midnight / 2am in the morning!.. not just me then ?

I cut a 4inc thick branch down once.. wife was not so chuffed as the tree did look lopsided after to be fair!

[si@nite]

2 hours ago, Rob said:

Like this.. and oh yes how we have all hedge clipped at midnight / 2am in the morning!.. not just me then ?

I cut a 4inc thick branch down once.. wife was not so chuffed as the tree did look lopsided after to be fair!

Thought i was the only one! ???!

[Tommohawk]

Thanks for all the comments and likes everyone! It seems I'm not the only midnight gardener!

I'll probably be moving sometime next year, and this time hopefully some open sky will be a priority. I'll keep the chainsaw and the shears sharp just in case though!

[Pete Presland]

Love the Saturn image and the story behind it, I too have done some night pruning for Saturn ? and some more drastic daytime pruning after!