August 12, 2022: First Saturn in a while and first light of Siebert 1.3x Tele-Centric Barlow

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Had a stab at imaging Saturn for the first time in quite a while. It was still less than 20 deg above the horizon, but I hope my ADC would counter the worst of the problems. Seeing turned out to be very choppy indeed, with heat radiating off the hills to my south-east. I had set up the Celestron C8 long before starting to image, so any thermal problems were definitely external. I used a small ROI on my ASI183MC to image, and after faffing around with the ADC took two sets of 10,000 frame SER files: one at prime focus, one with my Siebert Optics 1.3x tele-centric Barlow. I stacked 20% of the data using AS!3, and sharpened with Registax, with some final tweaks in GIMP. The result are below.

F/10, no Barlow:

F/13, Siebert Optics 1.3x Tele-Centric Barlow

The latter shows the Cassini division is much clearer in the second image, so I think I will be using the Siebert Barlow more often.

Jupiter rose above a nearby house as I was about to finish, but the view was truly attrocious, so packed in the stuff (had to get up at 7:30 for an early morning cycle through the hills here with my son).