Saturn May 15th

[Quark]

Hi All,

Imaged Saturn May 15th in pretty ordinary seeing, did it all again May 16th as the predictions looked great but the reality was a lot different.
Ended up deleting all of my data from May 16th, reckon this is the first time I have not been able to recover at least something from an imaging session. Have attached an RGB & 807nm data set from 15th. Also attached animations of my RGB & IR data.

Thanks for looking
Regards
Trevor

[coldlegs]

Very nice stuff for a seeing of only 5 Trevor
I have to get myself one of those fleas! How many mega pixels/fps were you running?
Stephen

[asimov]

Nice work anyway mate. I've been doing lots of that lately: setup, laugh, take one AVI for kicks to keep the eye in, put the scope away, run the AVI, laugh, delete.

Oh well..

[John Hothersall]

Your still picking up detail but seeing has been a let down recently and Saturn is moving on but still showing its Northern belt.

John.

[Shiraz]

Beaut RGB image Trevor. I also wasted some time on the 16th - yuk down here as well. Regards Ray

[Quark]

Thanks Stephen, the Flea3 is only 640 x 480 pixels. I run the R & G channels at 35 fps with B at 25 fps and 807nm IR at 11 fps. R, G & B exposures are 93 sec's per channel with 180 sec's for 807nm IR.
The thing about the Flea3 is the number of frames per channel that can be captured, it is capable of 120 fps. For this data set the seeing was so bad that I through away more than half the frames captured from each channel.



Thanks Asi, I think we all make an effort when presented with some clear sky, regardless of the predictions and often it turns out to be quite futile however the thing that I was most frustrated about on May 16th was the Skippy Sky prediction of 9/10 for both seeing & transparency for my region. I stuck with it for 3 hrs thinking that it would surely pick up at some point but it just remained abysmal.



Thanks John, the interest still remains as to just how long this storm can be sustained and if it will last long enough to create a new record for Saturn.



Thanks Ray, hopefully there will be stable air on the way, soon.

[asimov]

Trevor, I've found Skippysky to be inacurate most of the time for me as far as seeing goes. I also use it for cloud predictions. I now use it as a guideline only. If we want true predictions of this nature, we need the Canadian based Clear Sky Clock system here.

I might get excited if Skippysky predicts 10/10 seeing, as that way it's *almost* a guarantee of it actually being 7.5+ as I've found it to be at least that far out in seeing predictions on average. Not a slam towards Skippysky here, but one needs to work out that one can't take its predictions as 'gospel' & just use it as a guide only.

[Troy]

Good images Trevor. The seeing looks a little soft all over at the moment (not just Australia) :thumbsup:

[Clayton]

Nice images Trevor.
Some lovely detail in the rings, the first/last one in the animation looks the best IMO