Saturn 17/3 - between the clouds

[netwolf]

Ok so i got home, it was pretty clear installed the Accufocous and Telrad (Finaly installed it after all this time). How did i ever live without the Telrad.. If you are geting a DOB get a Telrad...

It was clear till i started seting up to image. Then the clouds started roling past.. hmm well got two clips between the clouds a 30sec and a 60sec at 10fps 1/20 or 1/24 dont recall which exactly.

Used VirtualDUb to extract BMP's, manualy deleted the bad ones (well most of em). Centred all bmps with Birds excellent tool ppmcentre. Then registaxed them. Just your standard process as outlined by Iceman in his DOB imaging guide.

And here are the two images i got. First one is the 30sec and the second one is the 60sec.

Regards

PS: All especially Asimov as always go ahead and reprocess to your hearts content.. Please describe your steps taken. I dont have all the fancy software, so all i ask is you provide a general outline of what you did. That I may be able to try and mimic say in GIMP (Free Phtoshop like application) or any other free application.

[davidpretorius]

nice,

firstly, could you see cassini division, what ep??

[netwolf]

Dave, with 9mm i could see Saturn and the division nicely. It always seems to be sharper through the EP than the Neximage/Barlowed2x. The clips were done with the Celestron Neximage webcam.

Oh for those manual trakcers out there, once i got Saturn in the FOV, i tracked by using my foot to turn the Az, and only sligh adjustments now and then on the Alt by hand. If it was not for the clouds i could have taken longer clips. But i am geting tired of hand tracking.

Regards

[Robert_T]

Hi Netwolf, Wondered what Video frame size you were running for these as they look a little "pixelated" - that is you can see the squareness of the pixels. I sometime got this happening when I used to capture at 320 x 240 ... seemed to stop when I ran 640 x480.

Good stuff anyway, this guiding with your foot caper sounds pretty full on :D

cheers,

[davidpretorius]

cool, just trying to get a feeling for the seeing, i do remember how hard it is to focus without tracking

[asimov]

I tried to reprocess your images but had no luck. Sorry.

[netwolf]

no problemo Asimov, btw i tried your focus method using a bright Star (Sirus), and it kind of works, but am unsure what the focused image should look like. I also found i could use this as an excelent way to check my colimation which is slightly out. It got me thinking that i could use this with my borrwoed artificial star to ajust collimation. Would this work.. I mean instead of using cheshires and centre dots etc use a webcam and an artificial star as a live way to measure collimation while adjusting the mirrors. Could i also use the artificial star for focus. How far would i need to place the AF star to work, or does this not matter. The problem with focusing with a dob and webcam is that the object is constantly moving. Its painfull and difficult. If i could maybe do it with the AF Star that would make life so much easier.

Take it one step further i wonder if it would be possible to somhow motorise a mirror cell and secondry holder so that you can use them for a automated collimation using the virtual star and webcam as a guide. Probably not worth the dificulty. It would probably require a motorised mirror cells to be designed for that purpose.

Regards