2nd Saturn of the season 8/3/11 Flextube auto

[Space Cowboy]

After seeing so many Saturn images appearing on the forum my patience finally cracked and despite having to get up at 5.30am I had a late night Saturn session with hopes high for good conditions. Frustratingly seeing was horrid! Finally after contemplating packing up without any decent images conditions improved slightly (still only 5/10).

Taken at 1am with flextube auto Dob and spc900. 3x Tal, 6 min avi, 100% gain, shutter 1/50. Stacked 500 from over 3000.

Turned out better than expected but well short of what I was hoping for. Fingers crossed next time seeing will be better!

Image is 75% scale.

[bigal1]

Nice image Stuart especially with iffy conditions .

[Space Cowboy]

Cheers Alan! Could do with some of your good seeing....you are certainly making the most of it!

[AztecastroMcJ]

Yep decent effort Stuart, total cloud cover here in Scotland

so u lucky u got some relatively clear skys

nice1

James

[Gadget]

Even with bad seeing you have managed to grab a very nice image Stuart

Kevin

[neil phillips]

Thats dedication Stuart, getting up early as well, it was odd because conditions at my location were a mixed bag, no wind ( which is a must for us newt users ) moisture in the air, which often calms conditions, all should have meant a superb night, but the extreme cold seems to affect this, stopping the seeing from being superb, i suspect local heat sources are just not mixing well with the extreme cold air. Not sure if thats what happens at your location ? i thought the image looked smaller than the listed 3x barlow then noticed the 75%. if you get good conditions, my advice is to slow the camera down a bit 1/50 secs exposure is great for fast seeing reactions, but on saturn its a bit optimistic, unless your powers are quite low. the extral light you will get going to 1/25th ( or whatever it is on a spc cant remember ) you will be able to put to good use by increasing image scale, looking at your image here i would imagine you could get away with a short extension tube to up image scale a tad, but of course only under good conditions. Because my base images are 200% resamples that i downsize during processing, everything looks massive to me. but i do think you should aim for larger image scale if conditions allow for it, with your 10" i imagine its a f4.5 so yeah a short tube with the 3x should be ok, with good collimation focussing and seeing. good to see you doing 6 mins, i cant go any lower either with a 10, but at my latest scale i probably should. a good start, just work with the problems, you would be surprised what can be achieved even under mediocre conditions, with enough scale, good focussing and collimation, though its hard with a spc Stuart, i realize it makes your job much harder than with a DBK DMK but i like your image i think you are improving nice shot

[ddtwelve12]

nice one stuart beats mine too embarassed now to put mine on

[Space Cowboy]

Thanks for your comments guys!

Thanks Neil for your info and encouragement!

Saturn was indeed over the house so that must have made things worse. 2am-3am would have been better but not possible lol For sure I would love to use my extension which would make 5.5x mag but the seeing was way too bad and the auto Dob tracking for some reason was playing up....had to keep working the hand control almost continuously. Even after re-star aligning it was just the same. One of those moments when I wished I'd been cloned with an Octopuss as I focused with one hand , working the handcontrol with the other and held the netbook between my teeth! (slight exaggeration but you get the drift).

Nearly had a Homer Simpson/Basil Fawlty moment with all the frustration, "start tracking properly you ba****rd or I'll give you a damned good thrashing!" followed by a hysterical scream and flaying the scope with a tree branch!

Thankfully the sober words of JFK came into my mind "we choose to image Saturn not because it's easy but because it's hard"

I tell you capturing a 6 min avi with dodgy tracking was like flying a helicopter on one of those 80s video games!

As you mentioned Neil I downscaled the image, something I don't like doing but thought it flattered the sharpness.

Tomorrow night looks clear so maybe some more Dedication/Madness/Frustration lol

[Space Cowboy]

nice one stuart beats mine too embarassed now to put mine on

The quickest way to improve is by showing your pics and getting advice

[Looking Up]

Nice image Stuart, it's easy to see you are quite a few steps further along the imaging road! I prefer 1 in the morning to 5.30, staying up is much easier then getting up! Well done for that!!

[Space Cowboy]

Nice image Stuart, it's easy to see you are quite a few steps further along the imaging road! I prefer 1 in the morning to 5.30, staying up is much easier then getting up! Well done for that!!

Cheers mate! Once you get the hang of it you will blow me away with that c11 lol

Ok, did a resample at 2x in Registax and here is the image at 100%