A 2nd and an eventually better session with Saturn....

[geoflewis]

I headed out to the observatory about 11pm on 13 September, with Saturn around 26° elevation and 90 mins or so before culmination. There was some high clouds around and the forecast showed the jetstream still overhead, but moving east. Once on target, it was clear that it would be a challenging session as again the seeing was poor, made worse by the variable high cloud and I struggled to get focus even with the IR742 Pro Planet filter. I considered giving up and shutting down, but decided to stick with it and some 3 hours later conditions improved somewhat, allowing me to capture a much better (much being relative...🙄) colour Saturn image to go with an OK IR image captured earlier in the session. These are best 1000F per SER from sets of 5x2min SERs stacked in AS3!, wavelets in Registax, DR in WinJupos and final processing in AstroSurface.

I was able to extract better colour banding and a stronger hint of the Cassini division in the colour image.

Thanks for looking.

[Kon]

Very nice Geof. Your perseverance has paid off! It seems the better seeing was for the OSC capture.

[orion25]

Great work, Geof. You can really pull out the best in less-than-ideal conditions. The banding is prominent in both images and Cassini is evident.👍

Reggie

[geoflewis]

13 minutes ago, Kon said:

Very nice Geof. Your perseverance has paid off! It seems the better seeing was for the OSC capture.

Thanks Kostas, yes things improved later, which I think may be when Saturn moved from being over rooftops. I have issues every year in the planets' early season as mine and my neighbour's rooves are east through south of my observatory and with Saturn <30° elevation I suspect it's badly impacted by thermals off the roof tops. Once Saturn is west of the meridian I'm imaging it over back gardens and fields, but of course the elevation starts to drop....

[geoflewis]

2 minutes ago, orion25 said:

Great work, Geof. You can really pull out the best in less-than-ideal conditions. The banding is prominent in both images and Cassini is evident.👍

Reggie

Thanks Reggie, as I mentioned to Kostas above, I struggle imaging the planets when they are east of the meridian due to thermal currents from roof tops.

[bosun21]

Nice captures Geof. Persistence does pay off with most things and imaging is definitely one of them. Nice banding showing. I was going to go out again tonight (Saturday) but I was just too tired. Monday is looking good though. Here is my Saturn from Thursday with poor seeing and the Jetstream.

 

Edited September 15 by bosun21
Add photo.

[morimarty]

Your patience as certainly paid of Geof by waiting for a decent seeing window. There is some beautiful banding showing through on the colour image and you have also managed to keep it clean and smooth.

[geoflewis]

10 hours ago, bosun21 said:

Nice captures Geof. Persistence does pay off with most things and imaging is definitely one of them. Nice banding showing. I was going to go out again tonight (Saturday) but I was just too tired. Monday is looking good though. Here is my Saturn from Thursday with poor seeing and the Jetstream.

 

1 hour ago, morimarty said:

Your patience as certainly paid of Geof by waiting for a decent seeing window. There is some beautiful banding showing through on the colour image and you have also managed to keep it clean and smooth.

Thanks both and nicely done Ian. It's certainly a challenge finding even average seeing conditions currently, I was out again last night and it started off truly awful, with me almost giving up within 10 mins, but it then significantly improved, especially for the IR captures, so I'll be posting those images shortly.

 

Edited September 15 by geoflewis