Saturn 8-9th April

[allan gould]

I have been experimenting with the actual capture settings in SharpCap to see which eventually leads to a better image as well as less artifacts when processed.
I captured a whole heap of avis from last night and this is the first one processed which gave me the type of image Im after.
There was no processing except stacking in Autostakkert and its mild deconvolution routine. I was particularly interested in getting some hint of the polar hexagonal storm and Ive just got it comming through, however the seeing was not particularly good last night.
Captured with Meade 10" SCT:meade 2x barlow and ASI120MM camera at 640x480 and 30 FPS.
Comments welcomed

[Shiraz]

another beaut image Allan - on a roll. Regards ray

[jjjnettie]

oh my goodness, that's an amazing capture!!

[allan gould]

Thanks Ray, but its mainly due to the great software we have now. The combination of a Bahtinov mask, SharpCap and Autostakkert makes all the difference for me. Also a well collimated 10" SCT helps. I think the latter has slipped a tad and I'll need to re-do it to get with the big boys.


Thanks for that JJJ, your doing great with that 127mm scope of yours.
Allan

[batema]

That is stunning Allan. Beautiful image.

[Quark]

Most creditable effort Alan.

Regards
Trevor

[allan gould]

Thanks Bateman and Trevor for the comments, I still have a long way to go yet but that's half the fun and then there is all the challenge of getting some colour.
Allan

[U.K.Cowboy]

Very impressive image Sir!

[Saturn%5]

Very nice Allan.

[Larryp]

Nice image, Allan!

[allan gould]

Thanks you Stuart

Thank you Graeme

Thanks Larry
Appreciate the comments fellas but I still have a way to go yet.

[Solar]

Thats an impressive image without any further processing.:thumbsup:
Its looks like the camera is a winner. Looking forward to see the others.

[asimov]

Very nice result Allan!

[EricB]

Great job Allan. There is a lot of details in the ring, yet the processing is quite soft.

Eric

[Paul Haese]

Pretty good image Allan. Good detail with just a hint of the hex, which is good but just a small amount of noise. You can denoise that in photoshop and still have a super image.

[allan gould]

Ralf, I love the camera as its light, small and relatively cheap and doubles as a guider.

John thanks for the comment - its appreciated

Eric I find planetary eats my hard disc and then there is too much to process and I wind up chasing my tail in the processing looking at minor differences and it's so hard not to over process.

Paul every time I smooth some of the noise out of the image it just looks a bit plastic for me. Same as when I look at sharpening, it just looks a little false and I wonder about artifacts. I think I will get better definition with better seeing and a bit better collimation.

[asimov]

I'd sooner see some noise/grain than the plastic effect you describe Allan :thumbsup:

[EricB]

Sorry Allan, wrong choice of word (English is my second language). "soft" wasn't a criticism. I meant that it didn't appear over processed to me.

Cheers,

Eric

[allan gould]

Thanks John, me too.


Eric I had a look at your lunar image site and that one for your frontispiece is an absolute cracker and don't worry I just managed to pass French in high school.
Allan