Saturn (poor seeing) - 2 Oct 2022

[geoflewis]

Here is my 1st image of Saturn this year, already well past it's opposition in August. Image was captured with my new ASI462MC colour camera through the C14, prior to the Jupiter captures for which the final image was posted earlier. The seeing was poor in the horizon murk, at it's lowly ~20 deg elevation. This image comprises the best 5% of a 10 min SER video run through AS3!, without any de-rotation, then sharpened with wavelets in Registax 6. A slight colour saturation boost was applied in Affinity Photo with further light unsharp mask applied to the red and green channels and layered as a luminance at 70%.

Thanks for looking.

Edited October 3, 2022 by geoflewis

[neil phillips]

Its difficult to get a good colour RGB shot of saturn at our location. Looks about right. for such conditions Nice catch. You joined the Saturn club now this year.

[Sunshine]

Poor seeing, great pic!

[dave34]

Very nice.

[Kon]

Looks more tidy than my colour Saturn this week. I have resolved to IR imaging it for the remaining season. I see you have the same camera as me, so give it a try.

[geoflewis]

15 hours ago, neil phillips said:

Its difficult to get a good colour RGB shot of saturn at our location. Looks about right. for such conditions Nice catch. You joined the Saturn club now this year.

Thanks Neil, I had better results with the mono camera last year, but I think that included using an IR grab (or mabe just the R+G) as luminance to sharpen it. Not so easy with a colour image, but we're really not getting any surface detail at these altitudes.

Edited October 4, 2022 by geoflewis

[geoflewis]

6 hours ago, Sunshine said:

Poor seeing, great pic!

4 hours ago, dave34 said:

Very nice.

Thanks both

 

[geoflewis]

47 minutes ago, Kon said:

Looks more tidy than my colour Saturn this week. I have resolved to IR imaging it for the remaining season. I see you have the same camera as me, so give it a try.

Thanks Kon, which IR filter are you using? I have the Astronomik 742 PRO in my other filter wheel that I use with the ASI290MM (mono) camera, but I don't think that will be parfocal to the ZWO UV/IR cut, or methan filters that came with the camera, so I haven't tried it yet (I have those 2 in another manual filter wheel for convenience). I see that ZWO do an IR850 for £25, so maybe I should get one of those, but that really long pass and it's cheap so wonder if its any good.

[Kon]

53 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

Thanks Kon, which IR filter are you using? I have the Astronomik 742 PRO in my other filter wheel that I use with the ASI290MM (mono) camera, but I don't think that will be parfocal to the ZWO UV/IR cut, or methan filters that came with the camera, so I haven't tried it yet (I have those 2 in another manual filter wheel for convenience). I see that ZWO do an IR850 for £25, so maybe I should get one of those, but that really long pass and it's cheap so wonder if its any good.

Both my UV/IR cut and IR pass filters are SVbony and the results I am getting on Saturn and Jupiter are pretty good; I initially bought cheap ones as I was not sure I would get much out of my manual dob setup. I think there is an ongoing thread on filters at the moment. If you look my Saturn IR post from a couple of days ago you can see the kind of quality I am getting. I had nice results on Jupiter but I have not done it in a while so I might revisit on the next decent seeing.

The ZWO seems to be more stringent on the cutoff whereas the SVbony allows pretty much all IR through. Would that make a difference in quality of the image hard to tell unless tested. 462mc is sensitive from low IR wavelength but it peaks at ~800 but why throw away any signal possible. @neil phillipsmight be able to chip in his thoughts.

[geoflewis]

27 minutes ago, Kon said:

Both my UV/IR cut and IR pass filters are SVbony and the results I am getting on Saturn and Jupiter are pretty good; I initially bought cheap ones as I was not sure I would get much out of my manual dob setup. I think there is an ongoing thread on filters at the moment. If you look my Saturn IR post from a couple of days ago you can see the kind of quality I am getting. I had nice results on Jupiter but I have not done it in a while so I might revisit on the next decent seeing.

The ZWO seems to be more stringent on the cutoff whereas the SVbony allows pretty much all IR through. Would that make a difference in quality of the image hard to tell unless tested. 462mc is sensitive from low IR wavelength but it peaks at ~800 but why throw away any signal possible. @neil phillipsmight be able to chip in his thoughts.

Thanks Kon, I guess my main concern is whether the different make filters are parfocal (probably not). I sometimes used my IR filter with the 290MM to dial in focus and could then pretty much use that setting for RGB & IR, but these were all Astronomic filtrs. If the Astronomic IR 742 isn't parfocal with the ZWO UV/IR cut, then that method isn't going to work with the colour camera. I can of course pull the IR filter from the other FW and try it, just haven't done that yet.

Maybe I could use the Astronomic Lum filter instead of ZWO UV/IR cut as then the L and IR would be parfocal... I think Lum is in effect a UV/IR cut....🤔

Edited October 4, 2022 by geoflewis