Saturn in good seeing 3/3UT - spot animation now added

[Shiraz]

Hi
Scored a short burst of nice seeing at about 5 this morning. Thankfully the computer had come back to life by then - after the update installed itself and shut everything down (the warning is along the lines "installing updates, please do not shut down your computer" - it should be "please do not throw your computer against the wall" ).

This is the first image of the session that I have had time to to process and I will not get to it again for a little while - will post more later. Two versions are of the same image and show what I consider to be normal processing and excess sharpening to bring out some of the features. Left the enhanced one at full drizzle size - It looked OK when large. Apart from Encke, there is definitely some spoke structure and I will have to very carefully process the surrounding images to make an animation (edit - not as definite as first thought) - is there some electrical activity going on at present?. Tehys is also visible on the upper right - it turned up with no extra enhancement or even its own track box, so the seeing was pretty good.

the other thing that was visible in the raw feeds was the dark junction where the rings go behind the disk on the right had side - I had thought it was a stacking artefact, but it seems it isn't.

thanks for looking. regards ray

edit: just added red channel animation - no sign of consistent structure moving in the rings

[blink138]

wow that is nice there ray!.......... read recently in an astro mag about the irregularly shaped (they called them hexagonal) pole cloud patterns, yours seems to show them too dont you think?
pat

[Shiraz]

Agree Pat. It certainly looks hexagonal - a few dark spots in there as well and possibly some auroral glow.
Thanks, Ray

[asimov]

Ah, the best I've seen this apparition for size & clarity, & I've seen them all.

Oh just to get clear skies let alone nice seeing here in QLD would be like a miracle right now!

Great work Ray! You on Facebook? If so post this on Freddie's Astronomy Planetary Imaging group & listen/watch them drool! ;-)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/204436579601722/

[Larryp]

Superb, Ray!

[Quark]

A very fine image indeed Ray and processed sooooooo nicely.
Encke is well defined and some interesting spots in the NEB. There is no SED's activity currently, nice job with the C ring, not sure about the spoke structure but an animation will sort that.

Top Stuff
Regards
Trevor

[Solar]

Got to agree with Laurie -Superb

[von Tom]

Fantastic Ray, with excellent detail.

Cheers,

Tom

[Saturn%5]

Great work Ray, very nice detail in both images, lets hope all the clouds stay away for the rest of the season.

cheers

Graeme.

[FlashDrive]

Wow ...that's nice ....sooooo crisp and sharp
Good separation between the Rings ...well defined...

Flash ..!!

[Shiraz]

Thats very generous Asi - thanks. the weather is a pain this year (not as bad as yours though) - for example we now have no jetstream, but lots of cloud - last night was great, but a bit of a fluke. Not on facebook - may be in a minority....



thanks very much Laurie



Thanks Trevor - so are you back on line? confidence down to about 50/50 on any spoke structure I think - something there , but it could just as well just be noise.



thanks Ralph - very generous



thanks a lot Tom



Thanks Greame - not a good start though, its cloudy right now



thanks Flash

Regards Ray

[Matt Wastell]

Fantastic images - 10/10!

[astronobob]

Interesting stuff Ray, Awesome show :thumbsup:

[h0ughy]

how nice it is to see a lovely Saturn. Very well processed, and the image scale is a treat - thank you!!!

[U.K.Cowboy]

Fantastic images! My goodness they are the best Saturn shots I've seen this year!

[John K]

Awesome image! well processed and great details!

[rustigsmed]

WOW!!
Awesome is all i can say!

[Shiraz]

hi Matt. thanks very much



thanks Bob



thank you for the kind comment David



that's very generous Stuart - and welcome to IIS


G'day John. grateful for your comments



thanks Russell

regards Ray

[Quark]

Literally just stepped off of the plane Ray, flew down to Adelaide this morning, had an x-ray to check that the wires in my wrist supporting the graft are still in place and am now in a full plaster cast for the next 6 weeks. Made sure that when they fitted the cast enough of my fingers are exposed to let me have a crack at rotating my filter wheel. Reckon it will still be interesting but if this cloud buggars off I intend getting right back into it, well as best as I can.

[Paul Haese]

Awe Ray why did you do that? Now I am gonna have to get my butt into gear and do some planetary work. Superb image mate with great detail. I thought there was good seeing down the south east over the weekend. Now I know for sure.

[Shiraz]

good to hear - doesn't sound like much fun though.
Just added an animation to the original post. No sign of anything structural moving in the rings, but there is a lot of other stuff, including brighter regions moving under the crepe ring.



Thanks Paul, it was pretty exciting stuff. Finally ran into the limit of my 12 inch aperture I think. Looking forward to your posts.

regards Ray

[Octane]

That is so damn nice! Well done, Ray.

(coming from a non-planetary imager!)

H

[Quark]

Hi Stuart, great to have you over here on IIS, reckon this image of Ray's scores yet another goal for the DMK.

Cheers
Trevor

[U.K.Cowboy]

Its good to be here Trevor some very fine images I've seen and none better than these. Yep the 618 chip takes some beating for sure!

[John Hothersall]

A fine image setting the bar high, can only dream of this with Brisbane monsoon in progress.

John.

[Shiraz]

thanks Humayun - yes, you have to be a slight bit nuts to do planetary (being awake at this hour for example), but when seeing is OK, its fun



Thanks John. we have had some clear sky between the the clouds, but its been hot - the sky is in constant thermal turmoil unless the wind is blowing calmer air in off the sea.

regards Ray

[Logieberra]

Crisp as! A real jewel against that blackness of space. This shot makes me miss planetary with a newt!

[Matt Wastell]

Hi Ray - I reakon you can make out cloud action in the lighter white band in the animation - if not you can easily see the uneven disturbance between the two bands - Super!

[naskies]

Wow, that's a stunner! :)

[Suzy]

WOW :eyepop: what a gorgeous image! I loved the animation too!

Ray, I've just popped them both on the IceInSpace facebook page and it's getting a lot of attention in there very fast. I can't resist quoting here one of the comments just said in there: "I seriously thought that was an image by the Cassini Satellite! Brilliant!!!"
There's a lot of "wow" comments in there. :)

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151518214146203&set=a.443095681202.235512.114571796 202&type=1&theater


Ray, what equipment were you using? Would you mind providing the details please so I can pop into the fb post, thanks.

[Shiraz]

thanks very much Logan. would your SCT be OK for planetary?



g'day Matt. I was surprised by just how much detail stood out in the animation, especially the clouds on the band edge - worth doing.



thanks Dave



Hi Suzy. thanks for doing that.

The equipment was a 300mm f5 GSO Newtonian with a 5x Powermate (effective focal length of ~8m) on an EQ6 mount. Exposed through RGB filters using a TIS618 mono camera. Processed with AS!2 software which combined about 3000 frames from about 8000 taken over 6 minutes.

regards ray

[stardust steve]

superb Ray, looks great!

[asimov]

And I in turn, pinched the image from Suzy/IIS Facebook & plonked it in Freddie's imaging page:lol::thumbsup:

[rogerg]

absolutely amazing image quality :thumbsup:

[Shiraz]

thanks Steve



thanks John :thumbsup:



thank you Roger

regards ray