Frustrating Saturn

[iceman]

The weather has been atrocious around here lately.. no clear skies for a month, lots of cloud, rain, haze, smoke, etc.

The sky was clear all yesterday afternoon and last night, so I thought for sure i'd get my first images for a month this morning.

When I got up at 3:30am, there was high hazy cloud, but I could still see Saturn. Through the eyepiece the seeing looked pretty good (5/10) so I set up the camera and laptop and started imaging through the clouds.

Due to the cloud and haze, I had to use the 2x barlow to let more light in, and reduce the frame rate to 7.5fps @ 1/8s exposure, with 95% gain.

Just as I started capturing, the high cloud was replaced by thicker lower cloud coming in from the south-west. I was only able to capture 1 red and 1 green channel through the cloud, and wasn't able to get a blue channel as the cloud removed my view of Saturn completely.

So here's just the red and green channel, processed in Registax only (400 farmes stacked for red, 280 for green, 3 alignment points each). Small image scale due to the 2x barlow, but couldn't go any higher otherwise there wouldn't have been enough light coming in.

Oh well, it's not what I wanted but at least I captured something after not getting the DMK out for a month!

Saturn was 31° at time of capture.

Thanks for looking.

[RB]

I reckon the seeing is better on Saturn atm, I can't believe how bad it's been here :sadeyes:

Mike at least you've still managed to capture some nice frames.

[YoKahainen]

Here in Finland there has been exactly zero nights with good seeing and maybe 2 nights with poor seeing this season.:mad2:

Clear skies

LKE.

[stephenmcnelley]

The weather at 25" has been useless for anything for too long as well, and i am getting tired of spamming the forums to do something astro-like:)

Mike if i can manage anything even half as good when the beginners imaging outfit turns up i will be beside myself, your images are certainly no worse than any others turning up at the forums currently, i love the way people include imaging details on the image plate also, how is that done?

BTW i expect the weather to instantly improve the day the gear does arrive...:rofl:

[ving]

to top it off the seeing has been pea soupy!

nice try tho mike, they arent too bad :)

[leon]

Gee Mike if i could get anything close to that i'd be very happy indeed

[spearo]

well Mike, those pics make me want to try too, I havent imaged Saturn myself yet (not really anyways....early tries with a security camera hooked up with cardboard tubes to a spotting scope dont count-not that there was much to show for it but a blurry spot of light...)
knowing it can be done these days is encouragement enough for me
Ill try it out in the next few weeks weather permitting.
thank for sharing the pics
frank

[jjjnettie]

You braved crap conditions to give us this and I appreciate the effort you put in.
The seeings GOT to get better soon.
I'm hanging out for some of those exquisite pics that you guys were putting out last opposition.

[Ric]

Hi Mike, they are very nice images in my view, I still haven't seen it yet this season.

cheers

[iceman]

Thanks for the encouragement guys.. havne't done any imaging in so long I thought i'd forget how.

Still waiting for some clear skies..

[iceman]

That's done during post-processing, in photoshop. Just simply adding a text layer on top of the image.

[Robert_T]

Hey Mike, I know how you feel, over the last month or so all I've had to show are two similar nights for my efforts... with the weather and my windows of opportunity few and far between from general work/life stuff I'm pretty frustrated myself! Enough to give it all away... but then you see pics like those from Damien's 2006 Barbados trip and the fire in the belly wakes up once more;)

maybe this christmas break that magic Brisbane seeing from last year will pay another visit!:D

cheers,

[davidpretorius]

yes, rob, Jupiter is nearly here and the magic month of february for brisvegas is only a few sleeps away.....

I share your frustration Mike