[Sebbie (Sebastian)]

Hi everyone,

Here's some of my first tries at planetary imaging with ZWO ASI colour camera and FireCapture software. I have finally set aside some time to go through Saturn clips from early late April (taken at F30) and February (at F16).

North polar region shows characteristic hexagonal storm and hints of central polar vortex in the high power image. Number of smaller gaps are also visible in A and B rings. I think my exposure settings were touch too low resulting in high overall noise levels / stacking artefacts.. Taken with TeleVue 3x Barlow the image shows Saturn one hour before meridian transit, 12:36am LT. Non drizzle stack of approximately 1000 frames over 3 minutes (60 FPS).

February image was taken in rapidly brightening dawn sky and is a drizzle stack of 840 best frames over 90 second window (54 FPS capture rate). Icy moon Tethys is visible at 2 o'clock (magnitude 10.6).

FC settings for F30 image: ROI=640x480, FPS (avg.)=60, Shutter=16.61ms, Gain=100, Gamma=50, WRed=52, WBlue=95, Brightness=0, AutoExposure=off, USBTraffic=80, Histogramm(min)=0, Histogramm(max)=60, Histogramm=23%, Noise(avg.deviation)=10.74, Sensor temperature=7.2 °C / 45.0 °F

..and for F16 pic: ROI=352x288, FPS (avg.)=54, Shutter=18.36ms, Gain=57, Gamma=100, WRed=52, WBlue=95, Brightness=0, AutoExposure=off, USBTraffic=80, Histogramm(min)=35, Histogramm(max)=187, Histogramm=73%, Noise(avg.deviation)=28.29, Sensor temperature=18.5 °C / 65.3 °F

Comments / suggestions very welcome (particularly on how to reduce noise levels at capture time).

Thanks for looking,
Sebastian