My best Saturn shot so far

[cometcatcher]

My best image of Saturn so far. 01-08-2020 at 9:30pm.

Meade LX90 ACF 8" F10 SCT at prime focus, ZWO ASI 183mm Pro with Svbony LRGB filters, 32,000 frames stacked. Processed in PIPP, Registax and Photoshop for levels.

[xa-coupe]

I never tire of seeing pics of Saturn. Even so, this one is up there with the best I've seen on here.

[cometcatcher]

Thanks Jeff.

[Troy]

Good image Kevin

[cometcatcher]

Thanks Troy. Cloudy again now, but hopefully it will clear soon for more planet fun.

[JA]

Nice 1 Kev :thumbsup:

Best
JA

[cometcatcher]

Thanks JA!

[Tulloch]

Nice image of Saturn, it never fails to impress.

I notice you didn't mention AS!3 in your software list, you don't use it? From what I've heard, it is far superior than Registax for stacking. Also, no Barlow?

Andrew

[cometcatcher]

Hi Andrew, no I'm still trying to figure out how to use Autostack program thingy. ;)

No, no barlow. The ASI 183 has tiny 2.4um pixels and it helps keep the frame rate up if I don't use one.

[Tulloch]

IMHO, using AS!3 is the easiest part of this whole AP process. Just drag the video onto the screen, click the "Analyse" button, auto choose the alignment points with a size that gives me around 100 APs, stack 3000, 5000, 7500 and 10000 frames, make sure 3x drizzle is on and press "Go". Easy :). Attached is a screen grab of my settings FYI.

Understand with the 183's pixel size, optimal focal ratio for that camera is around f/12, so all good :)

Andrew

[cometcatcher]

What does the drizzle function do?

[Tulloch]

Drizzle magnifies the image by shifting pixels a little bit left/right/up/down to eek the last little bits of resolution out of the image. It increases the size of the image which I think makes it easier to post-process as you can see the effects more easily. After I do all the adjustments I want, I can then reduce the size back down (usually Jupiter I reduce by a third to get the planet size back down to captured size, Saturn I reduce by a half to show it at 50% larger than captured, Mars I show at 2x etc). Here is a long description of the process, all I know about it is that it can potentially improve my images (even if it's just a little bit, that's enough for me).
http://www.stark-labs.com/craig/resources/Articles-&-Reviews/Drizzle_API.pdf

It takes longer, both to stack and sharpen, but I have time ...

BTW, here is a video of Emil (creator of Autostakkert) describing the program and the latest version, AS!4 (not yet released).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIjXmRh1DE0

Andrew

[Terry B]

Do you use a subframe with the ASI183?
32000 19meg files would be a big dataset for full frame.

Terry

[graham.hobart]

bloody beautiful !!

Andrew- 5000?? 7000?? sheet man ! I have to up my game, was taking about 1000 frames and hoping for the best!!

[Tulloch]

Gotta take a lot of frames, for Jupiter I image for 3 minutes at 150 fps (=27000 frames), Saturn is 5 min at 100fps = 30000 frames. Cropped appropriately, each video is only about 4GB or so. The most recent images I took of Saturn and moons were 15GB each :lol:

[graham.hobart]

Wow! been seriously under exposing

[graham.hobart]

getting 150fps !! is that easily done on firecapture at 10bits ?/ what are your settings??

[Tulloch]

I'll reply on your posting

[graham.hobart]

Thanks once again people!!:thumbsup:

[cometcatcher]

The AVI's are shot using ROI of only 320x240 or 640x480 so not so big.





Thanks Graham. I take as many as I can before it rotates. I was getting 177fps on Jupiter earlier.