First Saturn in 3 years

[Paul Haese]

After my footy teams win tonight and I got home from the game I decided to take a look at Jupiter early on. Seeing was ok but not fabulous. Spent a couple of hours collecting some data and then was about to go to bed when I took at a look at Saturn. Not entirely fantastic seeing but good enough to collect my first lot of data on this planet this year.

Pretty reasonable seeing at around 6/10.

[CapturingTheNight]

Very nice Paul. Good to see you getting back into a bit of planetary. Oh, and Happy Birthday for today. Hope its a good one.

[batema]

Very nice indeed.

[beren]

:thumbsup: top image Paul, great to see a solar system image from you ( what camera ?) and Happy birthday too

[Camelopardalis]

Nice one Paul, hope you'll go back on a better night :thumbsup:

[Maurice]

Nice result Paul.

cheers
Maurice

[RickS]

Very classy, Paul!

[Paul Haese]

Thanks all for the comments. Bit of a shock to the system. I really need to find a way to automate planetary imaging. I basically know how I want to do it, just not great at writing the software. :rofl:

Stuart, the camera is a ZWO120MM. Still running on an ancient camera but it is still effective in good seeing. Upgrading soon as I swap out the camera I bought.

[alan meehan]

nice shot of Saturn Paul and happy birthday
ALAN

[edwardsdj]

Hi Paul,

That is a beautiful image of Saturn. Great to see you are back into it after 3 years.

I haven't taken an image of a planet in about that long either.

Take care,
Doug

[johnnyt123]

That is a beautiful image of Saturn Paul.

Since you want to upgrade to a new planetary camera may I ask what the best camera out there is currently the best in your opinion?

Regards.

John

[Paul Haese]

Thanks John. It really depends on what your budget is and what your preferences are in terms of imaging. Currently the most commonly used cameras are those made by ZWO and then less commonly cameras made by Point Grey Research. From what I have seen around the 290MM or 290MC (MM stands for monochrome and MC stands for colour) seems quite popular but it does have very small pixels, however it does have very low read noise. I decided on the 174MM because I think it suits my system the best in terms of image scale and well depth. It has larger pixels which works better with the barlows I have at my disposal. It gives a similar size to the 120MM and a 2.5x powermate which I used for this image.

So essentially I think either of those cameras are fine. I cannot say that there is a particular best one at present but you will need to examine which camera will suit you system best. The Point Grey Research cameras are far too expensive at present, and whilst I have used them in the past I am not prepared to spend a lot of money on a camera that will be obsolete in a few years.

[astronobob]

Awesome Paul, Id be glad to get somewhere near that during Saturn's opposition !
Great finish for your team & Start to Saturn Season :thumbsup: