Hi guys.
Got up early this morning (bit after 1am) to do some webcam imaging of Saturn, figured the skies would be clear after the storms went through and was hoping for some good seeing.
I didn't get the seeing I was after though, it was pretty darn average actually with the image swimming about badly.
It's still reaaaaally frustrating doing this stuff with a dob and no tracking, but I got a bit better at it today by getting the finderscope alignment more accurate, and my recent changes to smooth the az motion of the base helped too.
I spent more time getting the focus right with the hartman mask today, by using one of the gemini twins as my focus star and getting it pinpoint before moving back to saturn. It's hard even doing that though, with the star moving out of the FOV in 10 seconds I don't have long to get focus right, and the image shakes about when I turn the knobs because it wobbles the OTA. I guess the moonlight focuser will help
I tried at f/5 first but the videos were garbage. Some of the f/10 ones were better, and a couple are worth posting but i'm not sure if they're any better than my previous attempt.
Here's one I tried in black and white capture mode.. 5fps, 0 gain, 0 gamma, 50% brightness.
Stacked about 200 / 400 and processed wavelets in registax. Crop in photoshop.
And here's a colour version, similar settings and similar number of stacked frames.
I'm not happy that I didn't get much detail on the planet or the cassini division (I'll blame this on the bad seeing), but i'm kinda happy that I was able to get rid of the shaking that made a wobbly cassini division last time by ensuring that the scope had settled by letting the object drift into the FOV before I started recording.
Thoughts and comments appreciated!