Saturn 19/03/2011

[cgarry]

Yet another attempt on Saturn. I do think the little SPC900NC webcam is now working very hard.

These images are both from the same AVI, the second one is an attempt to make the image larger using some Drizzling in Registax. I am not fully happy with the colours just yet, but this is the most detail I have managed to capture to date so I am quite pleased overall.

19/03/2011 00:53

19/03/2011 00:53

Cheers,

Chris

[cgarry]

Another attempt at increasing the image size and playing with the colours:

19/03/2011 00:53

Cheers.

Chris

[lukebl]

That's a really nice result.

Incidentally, I prefer the first image colour-wise. I think the last one is a bit too bleached.

[AztecastroMcJ]

Yep great result 1st pic is best for me aswell, most natural

colours and details very good

[red dwalf]

first on for me too, looks natural and well focused, size is`nt everything i`m told,

nice to see those rings opening up again

[cgarry]

I'm glad the first image is the most popular as it had very little processing effort put into it compared to the others. I guess less really is more!

Cheers,

Chris

[Space Cowboy]

Great images! The best I'v seen on here with the spc900. What capture software did you use I'm having trouble with yellow avis?

[oldfruit]

Great results, i`m with the others as the first image looks better.

[brianb]

Very nice indeed! That 925 is working well for you...

[cgarry]

Great images! The best I'v seen on here with the spc900. What capture software did you use I'm having trouble with yellow avis?

I use SharpCap for capturing the AVIs. I had been working with the white balance set to outdoor, but the resulting images were far too yellow and I really struggled to correct it with software.

I have now moved back to setting the white balance to auto, which is what I used for this capture. This produces an image with a little too much blue, but this is easily fixed by reducing the blue channel using the levels tool in Gimp.

Cheers,

Chris

[beamish]

XLNT captures !!

[Alan]

Great pics and I like the first one best too

These are superb results from an SPC900.

Alan

[leenewtoastro]

seriously, thats very nice with the spc900. so no lx or amp off etc? raw?

[cgarry]

Thanks all.

seriously, thats very nice with the spc900. so no lx or amp off etc? raw?

No, it is just the bog standard SPC880 from Morgan, with their firmware upgrade to SPC900. That little webcam is such good value for money.

Chris

[astromerlin]

Some very fine detail there, great captures.

With regards to the SPC colour I've found sometimes when I first plug the webcam in I get very yellow images so the first thing I do is to click the "Restore to factory settings" before I start adjustments, This seems to reset the colour balance to an overly blue image which as you said can be adjusted out in processing.

[Space Cowboy]

I use SharpCap for capturing the AVIs. I had been working with the white balance set to outdoor, but the resulting images were far too yellow and I really struggled to correct it with software.

I have now moved back to setting the white balance to auto, which is what I used for this capture. This produces an image with a little too much blue, but this is easily fixed by reducing the blue channel using the levels tool in Gimp.

Cheers,

Chris

Thanks Chris, that's a very good advert for sharpcap i will give that a go next time. Like you say blue is easier to deal with than the dreaded yellow.

[Space Cowboy]

Some very fine detail there, great captures.

With regards to the SPC colour I've found sometimes when I first plug the webcam in I get very yellow images so the first thing I do is to click the "Restore to factory settings" before I start adjustments, This seems to reset the colour balance to an overly blue image which as you said can be adjusted out in processing.

Good tip

[astroman001]

That's a really good image, the storn is very well contrasted against the globe. Saturn is hard to image at the moment due to low altitude and low brightness.

regards

Peter

[cgarry]

I have had a bit of time to play with some of the other AVI files from this session and I thought I would share them here.

These 2 images had the best focus I could manage by using a Bahtinov mask on a nearby star. They were also make when the seeing was it its best.

19/03/2011 00:53

19/03/2011 00:59

This image was taken a bit later, with what I believe was equally good seeing. The difference with this image was I tried to focus just using the image on the laptop. I thought I had done a good job at the time, and it was only after processing it became obvious that the focus was out.

19/03/2011 01:34

These last two images were taken earlier in the session with good focus. The seeing was not so great earlier on in the session. This could be because Saturn was lower in the sky or because it had not cleared the turbulent air that Cambridge generates to my south-east. I find it interesting to see how the images are that little bit softer.

19/03/2011 00:23

19/03/2011 00:32

Cheers,

Chris