An interesting comparison...2 most pleasing Saturns!

[Kokatha man]

The employment of a couple of "break throughs' in my image processing methodology this afternoon got me thinking about the fact that we normally associate iR-RGB composite images with slightly strange colour renderings (emerald greens & deep magentas being quite common.)

As I said elsewhere, I had discovered processing methods to create virtually identical-looking iR-RGB's to RGB's.....but with my findings today I believe I made significant advances (for me! ) in processing in general.....so that after reprocessing both the iR-RGB & RGB's that I had found to be the best of each from 27th March (well, I actually only made one iR-R-G-B channel sequence capture that night!) I got to wondering whether we should perhaps be using this capture combo more frequently, despite the increased demands in getting all 4 channels done with tight time constraints it involves...

I formed this notion by appraising the iR-RGB image taken at 15:25 UT being not too much different to the RGB one taken 16 minutes later.....sure, it wasn't quite as detailed - but the conditions it was captured in were decidedly poorer than when I imaged the RGB run, as evidenced by both the livefeed at the time and the subsequent replays of the avi's (this is something I scrutinise agonisingly when I have a plethora of avi's, to decide which ones I process from any one session!)

Also, I only captured 1000 frames for the iR-RGB run as opposed to the 1500 each from the RGB because of the time constraints in capturing at that scale in just over 5 minutes.....so it does make me fairly convinced that there could be something in adopting this type of channel capture combination into my regularly imaging sessions from now on...

Here's a side-by-side comparison nominally at 127.5% upsampled from capture scale and treated virtually identically - from the frame numbers through all of the processing regimens: though of course the RGB most likely had its (95%) quality estimate limit at a slightly better single reference frame standard than the 95% of the iR-RGB due to the better seeing prevailing then (but all channels for each having roughly the same number of frames after "Limit" in Registax)

I hope this display page allows them to be maintained at the scaling I made the comparison jpeg..!

[Space Cowboy]

I have to say those are the best (most natural) processed images of Saturn I've seen on this forum. The storm cloud is so white and fluffy. Truly outstanding!

[cgarry]

They are both stunning and as Stuart says, the processing is spot on.

Looking at them side by side, I prefer the RGB version as it seems to have a tiny bit more contrast. Well, it does on my monitor at least!

Cheers,

Chris

[twotter]

Amazing colour & lovely pics!

[RogerTheDodger]

Wow, excellent images.

[Kokatha man]

Thank you Stuart, Chis, "t" and Roger - I was pleased to discover some things that in my estimation did improve the final outcomes quite noticeably.....and I agree that the RGB is better with sharper/greater detail, but as I said, the window of seeing was noticeably better at that time.....and having a better set of images with around 500 more in each channel to pick amongst should've meant it would come out distinctly better - but I'm not sure whether there is that much superiority in it compared to the one done in worse conditions.....

So i'm going to try and do a few iR-rgb sets of captures from now on - and make a proper comparison of (hopefully) a good set of captures in iR-rgb against a similar rgb job.

[leenewtoastro]

very nice.

could multiple scopes capture the rgb stuff and then combine data?

extreme yes and ot but just a question really?

[Kokatha man]

.....theoretically possible and in fact I'm sure some folks have tried it: I considered it as a possibility when I was contemplating building a binoscope!

But I think that the optics of the multiple scopes doing the image captures would need to be pretty well fine-tuned to have not only compatable scales and resolution.....they would most likely work best side-by-side under the selfsame seeing conditions (hence my binoscope ideas!)

But ultimately anything I say here is mere conjecture .....I can't say whether there would be any real gains, but employing this concept would give you many more frames to work with!!!

[KentDave]

Fantastic pictures! I hope one day to manage something about 10% as good!

[Nibor]

Inspirational photos to proud of!!

I have a feeling that once I have mastered the "observational" side of astronomy and know my skies and telescope better then astrophotography is a branch I could become seriously interested in!!

[Vega]

Truley stunning Saturn images there. Nearly thought it was a post by Starman then (thats a compliment!). Oh how I wish I had a C11

Matt