Saturn 16th May with Seven Satellites

[von Tom]

Here are two images of Saturn tonight. The satellites were lined up nicely. Seeing was below average.

Cheers,

Tom

[Stu Ward]

Your using the exact same setup as me and i'd love to know how you get Saturn looking so good.
What software, and capture device do you use ?

Thanks

Stu

[Liz]

Nice one Tom!! :thumbsup:

[von Tom]

Thanks Liz.

Stu, the equipment for the planet image I used was the 12" Goto Dobsonian, the EOS 550D and 4x teleconverters (two 1.4x and one 2x).

I used the video crop mode (640x480 @ 60 frames/sec) and set the Picture Style to "Landscape" and increase sharpening, saturation and contrast to maximum (7, 4, 4) in camera.

For the video I shot 2 minute's worth of footage at 1/60sec and ISO 1600. This will give a MOV file.

To create the image I used the following:

Drag and drop the MOV file into AVIdemux (a free download). This will open the file. From "File", select "Save selection as JPEG images" and save to a folder of your choice. You should end up with about 8000 or so jpgs.

Open Registax v5, and select all the jpgs and drag and drop them into Registax. For alignment, place one 128 pixel align box centred on the planet's disc. Click align and then limit the result to about 1000 frames or 90% quality, or so.

Then hit "Optimize and Stack" and let the images stack.

Save the resulting image as a TIF (just for backup) and then use wavelets and RGB align to create another TIF.
That's about it : )

The Saturn Moons shot is a 100% crop of ten stacked images taken with the 550D (no teleconverters) at prime focus. The exposure settings were 2sec @ ISO2500, although trial and error can be used to get the best results.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Tom

[John Hothersall]

Thats a great alignment of moons.

John.

[von Tom]

Thanks John - I didn't know that they would be that way until I lined up the telescope, and even then I didn't realise Hyperion was to the left.

Tom

[Quark]

A nice result Tom and like the wide field of the moons.

Cheers
Trevor