Saturn 9th Aug with some storm activity

[Dave882]

Saturn was putting on a great show last night. Very good seeing and transparency had me staying up quite late enjoying the sights :D.

I took three consecutive 5min exposures around 2am, and after processing realised there was potentially some storms activity picked up in the data. Best way to confirm that was to assemble into a gif with PIPP, which showed a nice little small white storm in the north-western region moving across the face. Link below...

Link to gif (https://storage.googleapis.com/dso-browser.com/astrophotography/picture-45435c33ce278c3f0b80e694c6f7255f-original.gif)

Winjupos was used to good effect to tighten up the appearance of the storm, but seemed to reduce the resolution somehow? Best of the single captures (pre-derotation) here (https://storage.googleapis.com/dso-browser.com/astrophotography/picture-e35cb076321c9d5b6b2545495417b081-original.png).

5min captures, 10ms exposures

c14 non edge
eq8
asi462mc (UV/IR)
ASICAP
AS!3
Registax6

Thanks for looking!

[Saturnine]

Wow, that's a very fine Saturn image, worthy of an ALPO post, can't see the white spot though but you have captured the Encke divivsion.
Was still cloudy here at 1:00 am when I gave up any thoughts of imaging and went to bed but as usual, wake up to clear skies. Aaaarrggggghh !

[Averton]

Great capture David.
Also looks like you have the moon Dione moving in your gif.

[Dave882]

Thanks Jeff. yes there was heaps of cloud around but the jet stream forecast looked good so I thought I'd try my luck when I saw a clearing. It was indeed extremely stable and cloud didn't come back till almost 3am. Twas my birthday too so was a lovely surprise bday pressie!!

Yes It's hard to see the fine detail on downsampled images - but I've attached a marked version, and then once you see the location it becomes a bit more obvious on the gif when you see it move in sequence.

[Dave882]

Thanks guys - Yes I literally just noticed that as well just below the South Pole. I should have realised as I was tracking them visually before I set up the camera. If I'd had my wits about me I should have done a couple of wider field shots and included the moons. Ah well- next time...

[Tinderboxsky]

Fabulous Saturn, David. Aperture rules 😄 Keep them coming.

[Dave882]

Cheers Steve! Yep aperture certainly an advantage but nah the jet stream seems to always have the final say :P

[Anth10]

Super shot Dave- very nice indeed/ happy biff!

Anth

[Startrek]

Dave,
What can I say , a cracking image of Saturn
Conditions last week were good early but fell away around midnight ( guiding started really good around 0.45 to 0.50 and by midnight it was jumping all over the place 0.85 to 1.20. Maybe I should have stayed up later as no cloud was around.
Planetary imaging requires a lot of patience and luck too
Well done !!

Martin

[Crater101]

Damn fine image, be proud of this one!

[Dave882]

Cheers Anth, Martin, Warren. I’ll tell you it’s really nice having a few more clear nights this season which means you can pick and choose when to chase the planets. Very happy with how it came out and safely say my best Saturn to date. I had the binos on a bit earlier at some insane magnifications close to 1000x lol