Saturn, June 20, from Melbourne

[Stefan Buda]

The seeing was better than at my last attempt a month ago, but it was still coming and going in such a way that it was difficult to complete a good RGB run.
I can't see anything unusual on the planet, but the ringlet and the narrow gap in the C ring show up quite well.

[kkara4]

Very nice Stefan despite the seeing!

[Somnium]

it doesn't get much better than that! amazing detail, god view of the Hex storm, great ring detail. i wish i could capture an image half as god as that

[Paul Haese]

Lovely processing Stefan. Tops.

[Stefan Buda]

Thanks guys for the comments!

I really need to get a better camera, as with the old DMK21 I can only do 15fps at 50% well depth in the R channel. Also my primary is in bad need for a recoat.

[John K]

Nice one Stefan - you must have got in before the clouds rolled in from the South East!

[Stefan Buda]

Thanks John!

Yes, most unusual for my location to have the high pressure system overhead and no coastal cloud or fog.

[Sebbie]

Fantastic colour differentiation between the belts Stefan, filter wheel is king :thumbsup:

Regards
Sebastian

[Stefan Buda]

Thanks Sebastian! Yes, I agree, but also in Saturn's case one has the white rings to calibrate the colour balance which makes the job much easier than with Jupiter.

[traveller]

Yes definitely see the C ring well.
Excellent details.

[John Hothersall]

That is a very detailed image, a little over sharpened but it is all there detail wise.

John.

[Nico13]

Pretty impressive Stefan, nice work and processing.

[strongmanmike]

Just about as good as one could expect really, not too many non Hubble/Cassini/Peach images of Saturn out there any better than this one :thumbsup:

Mike

[Stefan Buda]

Thanks guys for the comments.



Mike,

I think there is quite a bit of room left for improvement considering that this image was captured with an outdated-generation camera, through a grime mirror in variable seeing.

As John noted, it is processed quite heavily due to rather poor data.
With planetary imaging, the better the data, the less severe the required processing.

[strongmanmike]

Well, I look forward to seeing that, please get the new gear :thumbsup:



I know, tell me about it, same with deep sky...I would love to get a job at Paranal I recon, even as a storeman or cleaner, anything, as long as I could setup nearby...not sure my wife would be too ethusiastic about that though :doh: :P

[batema]

Beautiful image Stephan. Can you tell me what equipment you were using. What a stunning image.

[Stefan Buda]

With deep sky you still need to do highly non linear stretching regardless of how good your data is, but with good planetary data there is little else to do after stacking.

Mark,

I used a self made 16" Dall-Kirkham on Alt-Az mount with field de-rotator.

[iceman]

Beautiful image, Stefan.

It's now IOTQ ;)

[Stefan Buda]

Thanks Mike, but you left me scratching my head wondering what the Q stands for :screwy:, I must have missed something.

[dylan_odonnell]

Quarter? :)

[Stefan Buda]

Yep, except the image is not that good, but it explains the wink.
My daughter thinks I'm on the autism spectrum and she's probably right :(.

[g__day]

Very nice shot!

[iceman]

Stefan it's supposed to be IOTW (week) but I'm a bit lazy updating at the moment, so that's why I said Quarter :)

It's a lovely image!

[Stefan Buda]

Aha, "lazy" was the keyword - now it makes sense even to me!:lol:

And thanks for the comments guys.

[ausastronomer]

Irrespective of seeing conditions, a primary needing a recoat, or whatever, that's one of the best images of Saturn I have seen. Unlike many "so called" great images of Saturn, this one doesn't seem to me to be "overprocessed".

I think it's brilliant.

Cheers,
John B

[Stefan Buda]

Thanks John!

This is what I did:

For each colour I used about 1000 frames out 3000 and allowed Autostakkert to do its standard deconvolution with 25% raw blend.

For stage 2 I used Astra Image to do a very small amount of Maximum Entropy deconvolution on each stack. Radius 1 for R, 1,1 for G and 1.2 for B. All with 5 passes and exponential psf.

Stage 3: Registered, RGB combined and white balanced in IRIS. Increased colour saturation just a little and applied the crisp filter in moderation.

Stage 4: Put it through Noiseware Community Edition using the Landscape setting.

[yoda776]

Awesome image mate :thumbsup: I agree one of the best images of Saturn I have seen.