Saturn-15April 2013 + animation

[allan gould]

Managed to get out quickly last night with a heavy dew here in Brisbane and capture Saturn as it went past the Meridian.
Captured at 640x480 and 80 fps with SharpCap and ASI120MM and stacked in Autostakkert (love that program) with no further processing.
Comments welcomed.

Removed the animation as there are several white spots apparent but dont show up in the posted animation.

[Dennis]

Very nice Allan, the tonal range looks very smooth with some nice detail in the disc and ring system, a very impressive image scale too.

Cheers

Dennis

[bird]

Lovely image Allan

cheers, Bird

[allan gould]

Thanks Dennis for the kind comments. I'm happy with the camera and I managed to catch over 10,000 frames in a 2 minute avi last night and I guess that contributes to the smoothness of the image. I have to get a filter wheel and filters to do this in colour and Autostakkert is such a brilliant program that it makes this a doddle.

Allan

[allan gould]

Thanks Bird, really appreciated.
Allan

[Nikolas]

What scope are you using?

[allan gould]

Its a 10" Meade SCT thats about 20+ years old with a 2x Barlow. Its the first scope I ever owned.

[Dennis]

Thanks for alerting me to Astostakkert Allan, it is an absolute pleasure to use although I still save the final TIF image and then open it in Registax 5 for Wavelets just to finish it off.

Incidentally, is there a live Histogram display in SharpCap when you are recording?

Cheers

Dennis

[allan gould]

Dennis
At the moment there is not however if you were to contact the author Im sure he would oblige as he is very responsive. I adjusted the histogram by trial and error and then just saved the settings so that I can reuse them when I open up the program again.
The other capture program you could consider is Firecapture which has every bell and whistles. Both programs are described and URLs on this page
http://www.zwoptical.com/Eng/Software/index.asp
Hope that helps
Allan

[Dennis]

Thanks Allan, my DMKs are Firewire and my new PC doesn't have FW so I've been contemplating an upgrade. My DMK31 is 1024x768 and the ASI120mm with its 1280x960 pixels looks like a nice upgrade to a USB camera for the Moon.

Thanks for the details on Firecapture.:)

Cheers

Dennis

[batema]

Stunning Allan.

Mark

[ozstronomer]

Nice capture Allan, both images look impressive, well done

Geoff

[Paul Haese]

Nice Allan, now for colour. :)

[peter_4059]

Great detail in the first image Allan. Colour wheel next?

[allan gould]

Thanks for the comments, guys. I'm looking to get a wheel and filters at the moment but decisions, decisions. It's becoming addictive and how deep do I want to get sucked in?
Allan

[U.K.Cowboy]

So these are mono with no filter and only stacked and sharpened in AS!2?

Great images Alan!

[allan gould]

Thanks for that Stuart. Just a 10" SCT, 2x Barlow and the ASI120MM. The capture software was SharpCap and the stacking was done in Astrostakkert. I do believe in the KISS principle especially with Astronomy.

[jjjnettie]

:) Gorgeous!!
The image is pretty damn nice too.

[allan gould]

Thanks JJJ appreciate your comments and glad you like it.

Allan

[U.K.Cowboy]

I'm with you on the KISS principle Allan. Rather than use a rgb filter wheel I'm combining colour and mono cams. You could do that with a colour ASI cam. Just a thought. ;)

[allan gould]

On first thought I rejected this out of hand but seriously for the cost of the MC camera it's far cheaper than a wheel and filters and it would be a backup guider.
Hmmmmmmm!!!???