I dusted off my 16" D-K last night for my first go at Saturn this year, but the seeing was so variable that the result is a bit disappointing. However it is the first time that I think that I captured detail within the Crepe ring.
There appears to be a narrow brightening and maybe a narrow gap as well, within this very dim ring. I've seen fake detail in this area before, caused be excessive processing, but I was very careful not to over do it.
cheers,
Stefan
Last edited by Stefan Buda; 17-05-2015 at 09:08 PM.
Yes, I did a bit of an extra stretch for the brightness levels corresponding to the Crepe ring.
The Seeliger effect during the coming few days should help with detecting features within this very faint ring. Spacecraft data shows a lot of low contrast ringlets and gaps in this area.
[QUOTE=Stefan Buda;1175925]Thanks Paul, Trevor and Mick!
Trevor,
While browsing Saturn images on IOPW I saw a recent one of yours that showed a bright spot on the Crepe ring. Was that an artefact?
Hi Stefan, there is still some work to do regarding that data. Several researchers have been involved along with my good friend Bird.
One researcher asked for the raw staked output from Autostakkert, that no sharpening at all had been applied to. In that form the spot is not visible, only when fully processed. Using his software & RS he was able to find the spot in all channels. The problem is it doesn't rotate with the rings and there doesn't seem to be movement relative to the rings which would be the case with a background object. I sent all .ser files that contributed to the first RGB on a 64 Gb thumb drive to Bird. Using his ninox software he cannot resolve a spot. His suggestion is to go back and start from scratch, not using Autostakkert at all. This will mean using RS to align and stack the data. It does seem like it is an artifact but none of the professionals or Bird can come up with an explanation at the moment. If you have been looking at IOWP or PVOL you will be aware that I have been extremely busy with my imaging but when I get the chance I will take Birds advice and re run that data.
Thanks John, Michael and Leo, and specially Trevor for telling us about the mystery spot.
I'm very disappointed that Melbourne weather once again wiped out a planetary opposition for me.