Saturn - SPC900NC - unstable seeing - or poor focus @ play...

[Logieberra]

My first Saturn shot. SPC900NC.

Hard to get focus spot on with the single speed crayford focuser... and seeing was shocking, bubbling over the place (yes, I do cool the primary hours before, and continue to use the fan when not imaging, and collimation is spot on with Catseye).

Looking forward to a good night!

Logie.

[renormalised]

How many subs did you use to build the piccie?? Seems a little dark to me, although playing around with the contrast and brightness will help. Also the blue cast of the image (especially the background)...you may need to adjust your colour sliders/histograms a bit to remove it. Although it sounds like the seeing was trash and that doesn't help!!! :)

Other than that it's a good shot :)

[firstlight]

Hi Logan,

What was the imaging set up for your shot? I'm using my MerlinCam with 8"SCT and 4 x Powermate... probably a bit too long, but when the seeing stabilises the results are bearable :). I don't think I have the right settings for the gamma on the camera so the colour is not what I would like, but the seeing in Brisbane on Saturday night was great and the results were the best I have achieved. Here is a link to my poor efforts, just don't let the colours bug you too much. http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=74159

BTW that is a pretty good image for bad seeing.

Cheers
Tony

[Logieberra]

Many factors at work in this stuff...

- fog on the secondary
- mirror temps
- focus
- collimation
- atmosphere
- optical quality

No ring divisions were seen via decent quality eyepieces, it was just that bad. Same result on a friends 5" triplet refractor.

Looks like you've got a great scope. Hold onto that one :)
Will provide updates when better conditions arise.

Logie.

[irwjager]

Gotta say that's a great effort given the adverse conditions! It's always good to have a benchmark, so you know what to expect under these sort of circumstances.
I did a quick clean up of the blue cast, reduced the chromatic aberration and applied some decon - hope you don't mind! :thumbsup:

[Logieberra]

Ivo

I've had another crack @ processing. Looks like I made some mistakes with the original image. Using the same data, I produced these:

[firstlight]

Good work there Logan, you might want to align the blue channel in Registax, looks positive on the Y and X axis, then that storm activity detail will leap out.

The result is a lot better than you thought, eh?

[irwjager]

Great stuff Logan! Like Tony said just align red, blue and green and you'll have a very nice image indeed.