Saturn April 3rd

[firstlight]

Well, incredibly it was clear the other night in the first half of the night so I managed to capture some Saturn a day before opposition.

Same set up, 8" SCT, 4 x Powermate, TouCam SPC 900 NC @ 15 fps. 1335 frames stacked and processed in Registax 5.

91656

[Quark]

A good effort there Tony, some nice detail in the storm and rings look good.

Regards
Trevor

[iceman]

Looks good Tony, nice and sharp and not overprocessed.

What's caused the banding, though?

[firstlight]

Thanks for you comments Trevor and Mike.

:shrug: I'm not sure what is happening here. I shot it at 15fps, had to crank the gain a brightness a bit to brighten the image. The avi had some banding and if I used all the frames (~4500), the banding becomes more pronounced after using wavelets. You should have seen the processing results previous to this... vertical banding as well! I've managed to play around and improve the result, but it is all black magic, and I am a rube in the processing game. Part of my problem is that I'm not sure what settings to use with the camera for best effect, and I adjust this and that, while not knowing what I'm doing.

I didn't have as much of a problem @ 30fps, but the image was pretty faint and then there was the problem of bringing out the detail. Got to keep experimenting, but another problem is having clear nights more than 2 or 3 nights a month. Other than that it is the problem of having the energy to image into the early hours, processing and having to go to work. :(

Can't wait for Jupiter... big and bright :).

[firstlight]

Reprocessed the data, combined consecutive sets in PS and played with the result a bit and I am pretty pleased with the result. Not in the same league as Mike, Trevor, Anthony and John.

The merging of the 2 sets helps negate the banding that Mike alluded to.

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[Shiraz]

Good going Tony - looks like more data helps a lot. Regards Ray

[jjjnettie]

Very nice effort there Tony.
I'm jealous, very jealous.

[firstlight]

Thanks Ray, Jeanette. Looks like I've only got 2 sets of good data for the night, which I suppose is enough (better than none, eh?) :lol:

[Troy]

Nice image.
With that camera 10fps seem to be the limit. The banding looks like image compression that's why 10 fps is the limit.