[MGTechDVP (Mariusz)]

Hi All,

Just sharing my results from tonight. Once again I was lucky enough to have very clear skies. I was observing Saturn through my 8SE and I kept on pushing the magnification to beyond the 450X mark and beyond with perfect views.

With the 5mm eyepiece and the TV 11mm type 6 + 2.5X powermate the view was amazing... crisp and detailed. I thought I'd be stupid and put the 5mm and a 2X barlow to see what will happen, and even though the image was quite soft, Saturn was MASSIVE... of course that was 810X... but to my surprise I was still able to make out a brightish cloud band and the cassini division.

With such a steady atmosphere I had to try to image it and I think these Saturn images are the cleanest I captured so far, so I thought I'd share.

Work flow was I imaged the F20 pic through a Celestron 2X Barlow and the Skyris 618C CCD, and the F50 image was captured using the DMK 21au618 and a 5X powermate. The mono F50 image was used as luminance on the color data scaled up which was captured with the Skyris. I'm very surprised at the quality of planets I'm getting with the Skyris for a OSC camera.
Image processing was done done in PS, Stacking in Autostakkert and a very small amount of wavelets applied in registax 6.

I suspect I'm pushing my 8" SCT to the limit, or close to it, but if anyone has any advise or tips on how to squeeze out and more detail, please share. One feature I was chasing for over a year now was the Encke gap, I feel like I'm right on the verge of capturing it but perhaps my mirror is just slightly too small for it.

Thanks for looking...