best Saturn of the season, 1st use of Astra image S.W

[Pete Presland]

It has been a long wait this year to get the time, or weather to image Saturn this year. An opportunity presented itself on the 19th and the seeing seemed pretty decent as well 🙂 

Saturn obviously very low at around 14 degrees.  some pretty good detail visible though.

C9.25, Asi224mc, ADC, X1.8 Barlow. Stacked around 10% of 30,000 frames.  Astra image software for processing, impressed by the Lucy Richardson deconvolution and particularly the denoise function.

[CraigT82]

Very nice! Doesnt seem to be much in the way of colour though?

[Pete Presland]

6 hours ago, CraigT82 said:

Very nice! Doesnt seem to be much in the way of colour though?

It does look a bit washed out, probably due to my clumsy processing 🙂 probably lost some colour during the sharpening/denoise, thank you for your observation, always good to have another sets of eyes!

[CraigT82]

It is nice and sharp though, the rings are nice and natural looking without any of the ring artifacts that usually appear when trying to get too much out of it.

I've never been considered anything else other than AS3 and registax for processing so will check out Astra image.

[astroman001]

That's an excellent image of Saturn at 14 degrees.  I have heard that the seeing on the 19th was very good. well done.

Peter

[Pete Presland]

Had another go to try and increase the color. I think i have teased a bit more from it, without doing to much damage. 

What do you think @CraigT82 

[CraigT82]

Yeah not bad, definitely a bit more colour but I think the rings may have suffered a little?  Have you  tried processing the globe and rings separately? 

I had real trouble getting decent colour in mine captured on the 18th (using 290mono and rgb), really had to push the hue/saturation to get it looking yellow, which ruined it overall and ended up not bothering even posting it! 

Its really hard when the planets are so low, but I think the good thing about persevering when others might have given up is that we get the chance to really learn and develop the collection and processing methods, and really get the best out of the data we've got so that when they finally rise up higher we will be able to produce the most stunning images with everything we've learned... or something like that anyway! 

[morimarty]

 Pete your image of saturn is exceptional the C9.25 as certainly cut through all the merk the UK as to offer. The boosted colour version is very subtle but very clean and sharp excellent work considering saturn is skimming the chimney pots.

[Pete Presland]

Another go at this SER file today. I stacked again AS3, rather than doing the RGB align in Registax 6. I used the individual RGB sliders to increase the values on the histogram, while ensuring i didn't clip any of them (hopefully).

Then i followed the same process in Astraimage as before for sharpening/denoise. The result is certainly brighter, maybe a little to bright in the center and has a little more color again?

 

Edited September 29, 2019 by Pete Presland

[CraigT82]

Yes... to my eye that looks better! 👍

[neil phillips]

Nice one Pete. Not easy that low. As you say seeing must have been quite stable to get a result like that this low. Good to see you still imaging.

[Pete Presland]

3 hours ago, neil phillips said:

Nice one Pete. Not easy that low. As you say seeing must have been quite stable to get a result like that this low. Good to see you still imaging.

Its been a quite period imaging wise of late. I have some very tall conifers not far from me that have been blocking access to Jupiter and Saturn until they have transited the meridian. So i only get to view/image them on the way down. 

Definitely having a go at Uranus again soon though, Mars should be excellent next year as well, sandstorms permitting 🙂 

[tooth_dr]

I liked the first two, but the third version looks pretty awesome!  Amazing.

[Pete Presland]

1 minute ago, tooth_dr said:

I liked the first two, but the third version looks pretty awesome!  Amazing.

I have been using the auto RGB align in registax 6 for ages, but it did seem to make this data look washed out. 

[orion25]

Wow! They're all great images but that third one really pops out, Pete. Nice job!

Reggie

[Pete Presland]

On 15/11/2019 at 05:57, orion25 said:

Wow! They're all great images but that third one really pops out, Pete. Nice job!

Reggie

Thank you very much Reggie. I find it really tricky to know whether i have got the most of an image or not. I looked at this thread on the house computer a couple of days ago and thought the last image looks a bit "over-saturated" in the centre of the disc. looking today on my laptop, it looks ok again.

I guess mostly down to screen calibration of the individual devices.

[astroavani]

14 degrees !!!!!!!!!!!!!
At this altitude I can do absolutely nothing, you are to be congratulated.
I have a C9.25 now, unfortunately end of year for me is a lot of work, so just next year I intend to test it carefully.

[astroavani]

I took the liberty of slightly processing your image using Fitswork and have to recognize once again that for just 14 degrees it looks great!

[Ruud]

It certainly is an excellent image. Congratulations Pete!