Finally my first Saturn image on IIS - reprocessed

[bones]

Hi all,

Finally the weather cleared and I got the DMK working again. Here's my first posted saturn image. Took the avi early this morning and processed this one on the run tonight. It's only mono, as I'm not there with capturing and processing colour yet and still getting used to the setup and capturing side of things (not to mention the processing).
CPC11, DMK21AU, 2xbarlow.

Tony

[renormalised]

How many subs used, how long the run??

OTA on an EQ mount or original Alt-Az??

Nice shot, BTW:):)

[sheeny]

Not a bad first attempt at all.

Carl, the CPC11 would be alt az unless used with a wedge.

Al.

[renormalised]

I know Al....I was wondering whether he may have removed the OTA from the fork and mounted it on an EQ, or had it on the wedge.

[Quark]

Hi Tony,

Congrats on your first Saturn on IIS.

You have the head of the storm and the CD nicely. This image does not look like you have stacked many frames at all. The more frames you stack the better the signal to noise ratio will be. I assume you are using RegiStax.

The DMK is a great camera and capable of very hi res imaging. When you are using it just for mono work you should be able to capture avi's for up to 2 min's with Saturn. If your scope is not Eq mounted you may want to try shorter capture periods, even at 1 min at 30 fps you would get 1800 frames and around 1000 frames will provide a nice result in reasonable seeing.

When RGB imaging with Saturn you have a window of 6 mins to capture all 3 channels although I am currently capturing the 3 RGB channels in 5 min's.

Good luck with it.
Regards
Trevor

[bones]

Thanks for the feedback Trevor, Carl & Al.

The CPC11 was in Alt-Az mode. I don't have a wedge and from what I know I didn't think that an equitorial would make that much of a difference for planetary imaging?

I usually set the frame rate at 30/frames per second, but for this run I set the frame rate at 15/sec and captured for just over two minutes, getting 1930 frames. The seeing at the time was probably about 7/10?

I used registax 5.1, and from memory stacked about 350 frames?

I thought I had the storm in it, makes me feel like I've achieved to get the spearation in the rings and the storm showing.:)

I'll have a go at processing it again with some more frames some time in the near future.

[bones]

I reprocessed it this time with 1260 frames. It seems a lot smoother. I'm just not sure if I might have a few rogue frames in there because of the apparent doubling in the gap in the left side of the rings or if this is more ring definition coming through. (I had another go at about 760 frames - it wasn't as smooth but showed the same ring pattern). Thoughts anyone?:question:.

[renormalised]

That's a much nicer looking reprocessed Saturn....much smoother:):)

You larger gap is more than likely due to smoother processing...you're getting better resolutions. What's more, the storm is standing out a lot more too.

[Quark]

Hi Tony,
At your level of experience I would suggest downloading “Castrator” and run your avi’s through it prior to using RegiStax.
Castrator will crop and centre each frame which will result in RegiStax doing a better job.
When you have more experience and your imaging improves even further, download “VirtualDub & ninox” from the “Resources Files” section of IIS.
Run your avi through Virtual Dub which will convert the avi frames to individual BMP files. Use ninox to process the BMP files to crop, centre, stretch, renumber & do a quality estimate.
The ninox output file will have renumbered all of the BMPS, listing them from best to worst. Only load the best eg: 50% of your BMP’s into RegiStax and just stack & optimize the lot of them. Don’t forget that if you have already done a histo stretch in ninox to disable that feature within RegiStax.
Regards
Trevor