Saturn 5th January - from Tassie

[davidpretorius]

Ok , jetstream was not yellow any more and the stars had a slight twinkle. Mars thru the 5mm vixen had slight colour split ie blue up top and red down bottom, so seeing wasn't great, but a lot better than it was.

Telescope was left outside to cool and ice packs were added to the bottom of the mirror cell. At least this kept the mirror within 2 degrees of the rapidly falling ambient. Also left the sucking exhaust fan on as well

3am: 2.5 degrees ambient and 4.5 degree mirror. It had been 19 degrees at 8.30pm!!!

Anyway, made sure collimation was right - check!
Raw mode back to std colour for toucam - check!

Temp swayed between 1.5 degrees and 2.5 degrees for the two hours.

Transparency was 10/10 - no moon no cloud!

I have 2 videos to start processing of saturn at 50% gain and 75% gain.

Here are some to start

50% gain - complete video with 95% (54 frames)gradient limit - soft wavelets
50% gain - complete video with 90% (248 frames)gradient limit - medium wavelets
50% gain - complete video with 85% (619 frames)gradient limit - medium wavelets
50% gain - complete video with 80% (1849 frames)gradient limit - medium wavelets
50% gain - new PPMcentre to grade the best 50 images, stacked in registax, no wavelets
First thing i am happy with is the colour, it is finally looking right and secondly, i am getting better at judging seeing. I could see the cassini division thru the 5mm vixen, but as you can see, the cassini division on video has not come out all the way around. So i would put the seeing as 5 or 6 out of 10.

I 5x powermated the 5mm vixen on both saturn and jupiter and was happy with the result. On a great seeing night (8 or 9 or 10 /10), i believe that this could be used as proper viewing setup!

I still have to do the 75% gain and also LR or ME deconvolution etc, but i cam happy i am on my way finally with saturn.

[asimov]

Dave...What can I say?? They are positively great! I'm so glad you've nailed Saturn at last!!!! Lovely colours too. Jupiter has come out 'as expected' mate...another 3 or 4 weeks & you'll be getting stunners of Jupiter. Good colour on Jupiter too.

Great work!

[asimov]

One more thing...Which way is 'up' on Saturn? I've noticed half the imagers post saturn pics the way you've got it, & the other half (me included) with post 'em the other way around?

[davidpretorius]

i get confused too, starry night seems to have the planet like i do, but i thought the image is reversed and upside down????

maybe the toucam should be the other way up and then i would be right?

[davidpretorius]

Ok, 500 out of 2400 frames 50% gain, sorted via ppmcentre.

soft wavelets, 5x3 LR decovolution, unsharp mask max 2.0, and a median 3x3

[davidpretorius]

same again for 500 frames, but with the wavelets set at mediuim and hard, for medium, i could afford a 5x2 LF deconvolution and a 1.5 unsharp mask and the hard wavelets, 3 x 1.3 LR deconvolution, no unsharp mask

I will process 1500 frames now and then compare the whole lot with a 75% gain setting

[asimov]

Very nice mate!

[Robert_T]

Hi DP, excellent stuff and I especially admire the very thorough scientific approach to the settings. :) Reckon the 3x3 median is the pick on them. Have you tried a despeckle filter in Astra Image to reduce the grain a smidge.


cheers,

[xrekcor]

Excellent Dave! well done, your improving with every post



I believe in Dave images North is pointing down.

regards,CS

[matt]

Top effort Dave

Quick question: what did you do differently this time compared to the image you posted in my thread of my first ever Saturn pic????:)

[Chrissyo]

Nice shots! I like the colour, and the cassini division is quite bold. I'm also quite jelous of your image scale! :)

[RB]

Great shots David, colour is great too.

Well done.