I ducked out for a quickie with the Dob a couple of nights ago to capture Saturn. It was playing peek-a-boo with the clouds, so I had to be quick. I didn't have much time and could only manage 168 frames, 52 Luminance, 34 Red, 40 Green and 42 Blue. Unfortunately the seeing had degraded by the time I got around to capturing the blue channel so I didn't have much to work with. I'm hoping to try again when the seeing improves so I can get some bigger frame stacks. Here's the result.
Nice Saturn pic, what a difference digital photography has made to shooting the planets. Stuff like this was near impossible only a few years ago with film.
Thanks Rick, I can only imagine how those with film did things. It would have been the true test of patience and perseverance. Going to back to the darkroom waiting to see what you got or didn't get must have felt like playing the lottery. In all honesty if it wasn't for the Luminance channel this image probably wouldn't have been usable. There was a bit of work done to recover the blue channel, making the overall processing time nearly two hours and although it's only 8 seconds of footage... I was out there for about an hour nudging the Dob around (with the neighbours shaking their heads) as I tried to follow Saturn in out of the clouds.
