Saturn in good seeing 28/12

[bird]

In the immortal words of Big Kev.. "I'm Excited!" (apologies for those youngsters who don't understand)

Last night/this morning was without doubt the best night of 2006 for me - between 3.30am and 5am everything fell into place and I grabbed about 65 gigabytes of saturn data to process in excellent seeing of maybe 9/10 or 9.5/10.

- Saturn was at transit (max altitude)
- 3.30am to 5am is the best seeing time around here
- Mirror was perfectly at ambient
- No wind, clear skies, low humidity so no fog or dew.

On live video, I could see the cassini division cleanly split all the way around, and many cloud bands on the planet.

It's going to take a couple of days to get a final image, but I couldn't resist processing one of the runs to get an early idea of the end result, and also to post here of course :-)

The highlight of this image is the Encke gap which just shows up around the outside edge of the A ring, this is the first time I feel like it is really visible and not an artifact.

Details:

13.1" f/5.5 newtonian @ f/33 (11000mm FL)
red/green: 3 minutes @ 20fps
blue: 3 minutes @ 12fps
PGR Dragonfly Express firewire mono camera
captured with Coriander/Linux, processed with ppmcentre,
registax, astra-image and The Gimp.

ps I'm looking at this image on a Dell flat panel screen, I don't know how it looks on CRT's or other displays :-)

cheers, Bird

[matt]

It looks great on my laptop, Bird!!!!

Great stuff.

But it's also a bit of a heartache. I set the alarm for 3-20am and when I got up there was cloud everywhere here in town. It was still cloudy around 7-ish.

And you reckon the seeing was great? Missed it again:(:sadeyes:

Which camera did you use?

[Astroman]

Very nice Bird, a tad on the fuzzy side but I am sure with more processing it will come up beaut. Looks great small though.

[Dennis]

Gee Anthony - that truly is a stunner. Looks fantastic on my 20" Benq LCD monitor. Easily the best Saturn I have seen this season. Nice write up too - sounds like you had a great session.

Cheers

Dennis

[bird]

Andrew, that's the problem with different displays - what looks good on my monitor probably looks poor on others...

cheers, Bird

[Astroman]

I am sure it does look fantastic on an LCD, might have a look later. It still is a beaut image no matter what monitor

[bird]

Here's another version with the brightness & contrast tweaked for CRT displays...

cheers, Bird

[Dennis]

Hi Anthony

On the 2nd image the Encke gap is as plain and obvious as a motorway - brilliant!

Cheers

Dennis

[matt]

Which camera Anthony????????????

[bird]

oops, forgot that bit :-) Fixed now, ta.

btw I saw the low cloud over canberra on the southern horizon. I have many not-so-fond memories of that. When we're in and living at the new place you're more than welcome to drag the scope out to our place to escape it. I suspect that murrumbateman gets a lot of 8 or 9/10 seeing nights due to the local climate :-)

cheers, Bird

[Robert_T]

Bird,that is a masterful Saturn and sets the bar for what the rest of us need to aim for this season. As Dennis points out that's about the clearest enke I've seen too. Well done:thumbsup:

[matt]

That's very kind of you, Anthony.

An offer I'll definitely take you up on.:):thumbsup:

[sheeny]

Impressive image Bird!:thumbsup:

Al.

[Uchtungbaby]

I loved that Saturn picture. It makes me want to stay up and have a go at taking a picture myself. I don't think I could get an image as crisp as the one you have offered.:thumbsup:

Do you get a detailled image by layering in Photoshop or is that how it comes out without using photo enhancement?:hi:

[bird]

Uchtungbaby, the way to get good results is to use a video camera and record 2 or 3 minutes of video. I was running at 20fps so that means I get about 3600 "raw frames" of video (I do this 3 times, once each with filters for red, green and blue).

Then you run these videos though a program like registax that looks for correlations in image features across all the frames and you can get very good results.

cheers, Bird

[asimov]

Lovely image Bird. Glad you were 'on duty' when the good seeing struck.

I'd have to agree, the best image so far this apparition. Congrats.

[ving]

i can see why you are happy with it anthony. great image :)

the crt one works for me... on my crt :)

[Shawn]

Whats that...Pale vertical line dead centre running in a pole to pole direction from 90 S to abot 30 S, I can see that on my LCD...Anyone else or is just me.?



S

[bird]

That's the merge point from a 2 point alignment in registax. I'm working on a better version of this image without that "extra" feature :-)

Bird

[Shawn]

Cool , I thought it was me, too much arcwelding...:)

[Starkler]

Awesome stuff bird. Just today I was wondering why we havent seen anything from you in so long, but Im sure the final image will be worth the wait :)

[janoskiss]

Just to think what a teency tiny patch of sky that image represents, the detail in there is astonishing. The CRT version looks best on my LCD. Thanks Bird!

[John K]

Simply fantastic image Anthony! well done. A credit to you particularly since Saturn is a relatively low object for us in the Southern Hemisphere

[Ric]

Great image Bird, the rings are very detailed.

great stuff

[davidpretorius]

legend bird, your excitement is very evident!

it brings back memories of the mars nov 05 excitobirdometer!

this is an excellent image

[asimov]

I'd have to agree with Steve, the CRT version looks better on my LCD!

[asimov]

Whats it reading on the excitobirdometer this time around Davo!?

[davidpretorius]

not quite the (9/10) full nude strut, I put it at around 7.5/10

[Seawolf]

Bird
This is the best Saturn i've seen for this year !!!
Congratulation i've saved it in my folder as reference
cheers and happy New Year all
Giorgio

[Satchmo]

Great stuff Anthony, I'm sure this image hints at the kind of result you were hoping for with a larger mirror and new CCD camera.

Not only is the Encke Division clearly visible , but the Crepe ring is split into two rings of different transparency. Pure gold ;)

Mark

[Lester]

Excellent Anthony

[bird]

Thanks for the comments guys, I've spent today fiddling with software to see if I can pull out some more definition in this image - looks promising, I might have a new image by the end of the weekend (maybe).

Extra processing steps include gain compensation for each pixel in the ccd to get maximum linearity, temporal filtering and resampling.

It takes a long time to run these things through, especially when I'm changing the algorithms and then have to wait for an hour to see if it's made the result better or worse :-)

cheers, Bird

[matt]

Admire your commitment and ability, bird.

Hoping all your extra work pays off:thumbsup: