saturn 18th December 2006

[bird]

Like Mike I decided last night to go imaging despite the awful looking sky conditions - blue smoke haze everywhere, high cloud, yuk!

Anyway, the conditions were pretty stable around 4:30am or so when I grabbed the best image of the night - the smoke in the air meant I was using 14fps instead of my normal 23fps - ie lost almost 40% transparency compared to a clear night.

Details:

11m focal length, 13.1" mirror @ f/33
Red/Green: 14fps, max gain, 2 minutes
Blue: 9fps, max gain, 2 minutes
Astronomik RGB filters, Dragonfly Express monochrome camera
ppmcentre/registax4/astra-image/gimp

no resizing, this is the actual image size.

cheers, Bird

[iceman]

WOW! :eyepop: Awesome Anthony, best of the season right there.

I haven't been able to capture the crepe ring properly this season, with the transparency being so poor I just can't get enough light coming in. What hints of it I capture, usually disappear during the processing and sharpening :( You've captured it very naturally. Top stuff.

Excellent image scale, great detail. Hopefully a sign of things to come!

[matt]

Very nice Anthony.

I love the banding on the planet and you've done a very nice job with the rings. CD all the way round which is no small feat given they are closing up by the minute:thumbsup:

[janoskiss]

Beautiful shot Bird! Thank you for posting it. :)

[RB]

Awesome Anthony, beautiful shot !

:eyepop:

[jjjnettie]

Yep, the best so far.

[ving]

yep as mike said, best of the season so far :)

you have plenty of tie to capture the crepe ring yet mike :)

excellent image anthony :thumbsup:

[Robert_T]

Hi Bird, what a fabulous Saturn. :thumbsup: Everything we've come to expect from you. Very nice, natural looking but with all the detail. Surprised you use such a long exposure 1/23rd normally, this would be what I'd do with my smaller scopes... maybe I'm under-exposing. WIll have to give 1/14th or similar a try!

cheers,

[matt]

Longer exposure would be needed to compensate for the misty/cloudy conditions and the associated loss of light I'm guessing:shrug:

[iceman]

Correct, Matt.

[bird]

Thanks for the kind comments guys, the weather around here has been quite depressing, especially all the smoke and stuff from the fires to our west and south.

There was a small window of good seeing - about 30 minutes around 4.30am, before and after that it was very poor. With such a low transit altitude it's very important to grab it at it's highest elevation.

Robert - the exposure is normally matched to the focal length and image size. If you use a long focal length (I used 11,000mm in this case) then the image gets dimmer and a longer exposure is needed. If I was using a shorter focal length then the image would be smaller and brighter, and I could get away with shorter exposures.

cheers, Bird

[Dennis]

Gee that is a stunning image of Saturn Anthony, just beautiful. Hmm, not sure if I'll post my ToUcam effort from this morning now.

Cheers

Dennis

[bird]

c'mon - you know you want to...

[matt]

Do it, Dennis!!!!:P

[Dennis]

Hmm, too much humiliation on my plate right now; what with the English cricket team and the loss of the Ashes. Not sure if I could cope with much more this close to Xmas. :( :(

Cheers :thumbsup:

Dennis

[John K]

Excellent image Anthony, very natural looking processing and colour.

[Phil]

awesome photo love the colour nice and sharp

[acropolite]

Excellent image Bird, ditto to what the others have said.:thumbsup:

[davidpretorius]

now thats what i am talking about!!!

bring on the royce!

great stuff mate, the images are working themselves up the charts.!

[Dave47tuc]

Great image Anthony:thumbsup:

Your images set a high standard well done.;)

[Satchmo]

"bring on the royce!" ?????

Is this some new ozzie vernacular I'm not familiar with ? :shrug: :whistle:

Mark

[bird]

lol, I wondered if that comment from DP would get a reaction :-)

Don't worry - the 13.1" with your mirror is doing a fine job. The 14.5" royce is still sitting here in it's shipping container, destined to go into a scope sometime around March/April at the earliest.

The 13.1" will remain my portable scope, I'll probably build a new one with a beefier mount (eg Losmandy Titan) for the 14.5".

cheers, Bird

[matt]

Gawd... I wish I had a 13.1" scope that was also portable;)

[bird]

Well, it's only "portable" in the strictest sense, as those who have seen me try and pack it up into my car can attest... :-)

Bird