Saturn and Jupiter with a dobsonian 16 Sept 2023

[ahmed_haider]

I finally managed to capture Jupiter and Saturn with my big dobsonian last night.
Luckily the smoke haze that had plagued us in Sydney for the last few days had blown off (atleast in my area) and I was able to get some nice frames of Saturn. Jupiter is too low on the horizon to get sharp pictures but I tried anyway.

Equipment:
12 inch SKywatcher dobsonian with Synscan, FL 1500mm
Televue 2.5x powermate (1.25 inch), which brought the FL to approximately 3750mm
ZWO ASI585MC planetary camera, it has small pixels 2.9 micrometers but generous sized chip (for a planetary camera that is) at 6mm x 11mm

Aquisition software: Sharpcap pro
Stacking: AutoStakkert
Wavelets and color balancing etc. Registax 6

This was my first time trying planetary astrophotography with the Skywatcher dobsonian, and it's really good for that purpose in my opinion. It's easy to setup and a breeze to use plus the optics are excellent. The powermate is an excellent addition.

Thanks for looking!

[Tinderboxsky]

Very well done for first light.

The first Jupiter image has captured Io and it’s shadow right at the limb. Plus a nice GRS right in the centre.

Looking forward to more images.

Steve.

[ahmed_haider]

Thanks for the kind words Steve!

I envy your clear dark tasmanian skies :-)
Have you had a chance to see Aurora this season? I've read that solar activity is peaking early in this solar cycle.
Cheers

[mswhin63]

That is really nice images for a Dob, well done

[ahmed_haider]

Thank you for your encouraging words Malcolm :)

[AstroViking]

Well done, Ahmed. :thumbsup:

[Dave882]

Nice work! Picked up some great detail. Keep it up!

[ahmed_haider]

Thanks.
I'm still trying to figure out how to get my synscan to track better. I'll try connecting to it with the wifi dongle. Saturn was jumping around in the field of view of the camera because of my synscan dobsonian making constant corrections in alt and az. So I couldn't get the ROI down to where i'd like it to be.
Also focusing is really hard with skywatchers 1 speed focuser. It doesn't make small corrections very easy.

Always room for improvement :)

[ahmed_haider]

Thanks Dave!

[Saturnine]

They are quite respectable images for a dob mounted scope. Don't know anything about Synscan controlled dobs , so can't offer any advice there.

[ahmed_haider]

Thank you for the kind words :)
The synscan dob is amazing for visual astronomy, and that's what it's designed for.
But of course I'm going to try astrophotography with it because why not :D

I even got took some exposures of M42 as it was rising in the east at 2 am with it :P
But they didn't look very good at 1500mm focal with a small sensor camera :)
I knew it wouldn't work very well but hey why not ;)
Always looking to be pleasantly surprised.