Better seeing, better results

[Mickoid (Michael)]

Conditions were better last night in Melbourne after some pretty ordinary nights over the past few weeks. I grabbed this shot with my 8 inch Newt and 5x Powermate using Meade LRGB filters and my ZWO ASI120MM guide camera.

[xa-coupe (Jeff)]

Another excellent Saturn capture .. we'll all have to wait another week or more until the next clear air around here!

[brettd (Brett)]

Great detail and colour.

I always like images like yours where the rings are white, but the planet yellow / beige.

My captures always seem to show the rings coloured like the bright middle band of the planet. Is this something that comes from a mono camera with filters? or can it be shown like this from a OSC cam with better technique / longer exposure?

[Mickoid (Michael)]

Thanks Jeff and Brett, I had to adjust the colour a bit because straight out of Registax into Photoshop it looked a bit bland with less colour variation between the disk and rings. When I shoot Saturn with my DSLR the rings always look too blue so I think the bayer matrix filters on the Canon 550d sensor must be different to my Meade RGB filter set. I just tried to match the Hubble Saturn shot for colour correction. The colour's still not right to me but it's the best I could get from the data I had. It also depends on the exposure you give each filter. I think I overexposed my Blue filter shot a bit too much. I've also found out my parfocal filters aren't parfocal, with the blue filter requiring an adjustment to the focus.

[Tulloch (Andrew)]

Nice image there, but I wouldn't use Hubble as a source of colour accuracy for the planets. The Hubble filters were chosen for photographing DSOs, so the wavelength response bears little resemblance to white light viewing such as what reflects off the planets from the Sun.

Instead, the images from the Cassini spacecraft are more "accurate" since the filters in its camera are set to capture the full solar spectrum (and then some), and NASA have gone to some trouble to produce "natural looking" colours of Saturn. Oh, and Saturn's rings aren't white!

Here is a link to some images of Saturn from Cassini, and a link to the article that describes the filters used on its cameras (see figure 20).
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/12...0-images-2016/

https://web.archive.org/web/20190715...ingScience.pdf

Andrew

[Anth10 (Anthony M)]

Mick,
Nice result - you really are making the most out of your new image train. It must be fiddly I'd imagine with the LRGB filters but you seem to be handling it just fine. I still like the principle of the one shot colour camera though- simple and instant results achieved. This Saturn image is posing in it's classic tilt showing the northern half and it's awesome rings.
Anthony

[Mickoid (Michael)]

Originally Posted by Tulloch

Oh, and Saturn's rings aren't white!

Thanks Andrew and Anthony, looking at Cassinis shots, I'm pretty close to accurate colour, probably a bit too yellow but Cassinis close up of the ring structure shows them neutrally grey, so I've got that right.