Saturn (less poor seeing) - 10 Oct 2022

[geoflewis]

My attempts at Jupiter last night all fell to the guillotine, so I was determined to try to salvage something from the session. Each night I set up on Saturn before Jupiter and actually last night my final run proved to be a tad better than any others, so I pushed, pulled and dragged this out of it. It's the best 6000 frames from a 10 minute SER.

[symmetal]

That's impressive Geof.  Clean edges and rings. I took a few 2 min videos of Saturn last night before Jupiter too. The processed Jupiter ones were disappointing, so I didn't check the Saturn ones but it may be worth a go.

I didn't think of doing long Saturn videos but there's little to blur compared to Jupiter's rotation so it's worth a go in future. 😃 Your 6000 frames would be a 10% stack I assume.

Alan

[geoflewis]

5 hours ago, symmetal said:

That's impressive Geof.  Clean edges and rings. I took a few 2 min videos of Saturn last night before Jupiter too. The processed Jupiter ones were disappointing, so I didn't check the Saturn ones but it may be worth a go.

I didn't think of doing long Saturn videos but there's little to blur compared to Jupiter's rotation so it's worth a go in future. 😃 Your 6000 frames would be a 10% stack I assume.

Alan

Thanks Alan, yes as you say no detail to blur on Saturn that I'd be able capture at its current altitude in these seeing conditions, so a single long run and no de-rotation. 10 mins gave me 75000 frames so 6000 is a bit less than 10%. No particular reason for 6000, other than I tried various stacks at 5% and 10% then 2000, 4000, 6000, 10,000 frames and on balance 6000 gave me just enough sharpness, with sufficient in the stack to push the waveets pretty hard. I certainly went harder than I would normally, but I think I just about got away with it. The Saturn images I'm getting with the ASI462MC are not as crisp as I could manage the last couple of years with the mono ASI290MM, but that's probably brcause I could capture IR as well as R,G,B and IR cuts through the crap much better  and I haven't tried using an IR filter with this camera as it's in a different FW.

[Kon]

Pretty good considering the conditions. Cassini division nicely resolved and some banding coming through on the planet.

[geoflewis]

1 hour ago, Kon said:

Pretty good considering the conditions. Cassini division nicely resolved and some banding coming through on the planet.

Thanks Kon, yes, Cassini and some banding is about the limit of what I can get currently with Saturn at ~20°, so I'm not too bothered with chasing the impossible 🙄. It's just nice to have a record from this year, to show the closing ring position.

[geoflewis]

FWIW here's the best of what I got last year with the mono ASI290MM.

As per the annotation this is an IR-RGB image, but also taken when Saturn was less than 1 month after opposition on 2 Aug 2021, so it is probably not a fair comparision to what I'm trying to do with the colour camera, now nearly 2 months after this year's opposition. That said, it was a slightly lower elevation and some better polar detail was revealed.

Edited October 12, 2022 by geoflewis

[CraigT82]

Very nice image Geof, It’s slowly climbing higher,  26degs next year. Will probably be the year after before I can get a scope on it though due to trees at the bottom of my garden. Nice to watch the rings closing as you say.