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Old 22-10-2020, 07:26 AM
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Tulloch (Andrew)
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Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: Melbourne
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Saturn and 9 moons - 19 Oct 2020

Inspired by Dennis in a previous post, I thought I'd have a crack at some of Saturn's dimmer moons, and with our moon at the start of its cycle and Phoebe now close to Saturn, it was the right time. As it turned out, capturing the moons wasn't that difficult, the real time waster was confirming their locations. SkySafari and Stellarium show Phoebe in the wrong position, WinJupos doesn't show it at all, and eventually I remembered about the NASA Planet Viewer website, giving accurate locations of the moons of the outer planets.
https://pds-rings.seti.org/tools/

I took two images, one using my normal settings (C9.25" SCT, 2.5x TV PowerMate on my Evo mount at 100 fps), the other at 1 fps but replacing the PowerMate with my Meade f/6.3 focal reducer to increase the FOV and let more light in. The first image was for Saturn and the close moons, the second was for Iapetus, Hyperion and Phoebe.

After stacking, stretching and aligning the two images I ended up with these. The first is just the planet which came out OK, the second is the cleaned up planet + moons image.

Also here are some stretched frames with the PDS data superimposed on it to show the moon locations. What started out as a bit of fun turned into a real slog, I don't think I need to do this again

Andrew
Attached Thumbnails
Click for full-size image (2020-10-19-0933_9-L-Sat_AS_F5000_l6_ap51_Driz30 Sat925LitLes r1g1b11 ps1sm150.png)
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Click for full-size image (Composite 9 moons labelled small100.png)
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Click for full-size image (Saturn Viewer 2020-10-19-0933_9-L-Sat_AS3Derotated_AS_F7500_l6_ap100_Driz30 ps1sm50 cropped.jpg)
145.8 KB58 views
Click for full-size image (Saturn composite image with viewer 2020-10-19-0949_9-L-Sat B labeled cropped.jpg)
132.1 KB75 views
Click for full-size image (Saturn composite image with viewer 2020-10-19-0949_9-L-Sat B not labelled cropped.jpg)
130.8 KB67 views
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