Well tonight I was going to try and image M83 but when I went to power up my DSLR I discovered that my batteries were flat!! No problems I thought, I'll just do a bit of visual instead.
So for about an hour I toured the night sky, every so often dragging my sons away from the TV to have a look at what I was looking at. Finally I pointed the scope at Saturn and was amazed at how clear it was. After once again dragging the boys away from the telly to have a look I decided to attach my QHY5 with a 2x Barlow and see what I could image.
After much fiddling with focus, brightness, etc. I took a series of avi's. The attached image is what I considered the best. It is the best 400 frames from 1000 aligned and stacked in Registax. A little bit of tarting up in PS and voila, an image of Saturn!!
Not as good as the images in the Solar System section but not too dusty for a first effort imaging a planet with the QHY5 - if I do say so myself!!
Thanks Nettie. I must admit I was pleasantly surprised to see the detail that I achieved with the little QHY5. I've since played around with the number of frames I used to stack, dropping from 400 to 250, and managed to squeeze a tiny bit more resolution out of the image but you really have to look hard. I liked the fact that I managed to get the storm.
Darren, one son was impressed, however the younger informed me, almost pleading, that he really wasn't into astronomy!! I'm glad you liked it.
Terry, it was only on a whim that I tried! Thanks for your kind comments.
Ken, fortunately my wife's a physio so both my shoulders have been treated but trust me when I say my back is still red raw!! It was one of those nights where everything seemed to work. Tracking was spot on, and I pretty much nailed the focus for the avi that produced this image. The message I've taken from this is to keep at it, one day it will all come together!!
Thanks Louie and Marc for the positive feedback. As I've said before I took this on a whim and I'm glad I did!!
I've been playing around with the image, trying to get a bit more out of the data. I've also blown it up, just to make it a slightly bigger image and I've added a nice little frame to the whole thing - see attached. I'm planning on this being the normal presentation for my images from now on. One thing I should point out is that although the text states my scope is f/6, this image was taken at something more like f/14 or f/15.
Nothing wrong with that, Mario. That's a great little shot!!!. If you can stretch the budget to grab a Powermate, get yourself one. You want to try the QHY5 out on a few other targets. Jupiter comes to mind...if you can stretch it to the wee hours!!!
A most creditable result Mario, some very nice detail within the storm structure and judging by how your data stood up to the resize it must have been quite good. As has already been suggested it would be interesting to see how things would go with a PM. Not sure what exposure time you went with but for Saturn 6 min's seems to be the max that can work without blurring due to rotation. Personally, I prefer to go with 5 mins but that is for RGB capture using a mono camera and filter wheel.
Trevor, it really means a lot to me to have some one of your ability commend my little Saturn. I'd always concentrated on the DSO's that were overhead and only gave planets a cursory thought. However since I achieved what I did with my QHY5 I'm keen to try more planets with it, and hopefully, in the future with a QHY8L.
Carl, as a Geology student I inadvertently renamed Ringwoodite to Rickwoodite in an exam because my igneous pet lecturer was called Dr. Rickwood. Therefore I think it's about time I had something named after me!!
Great going there Mario,
I'll have to try a 'Mario' myself one day.
BTW how or what did you use to make the frame around your picture?. I have seen it on a few photos and thinking of doing something similar.
Cheers
Bartman
Carl, as a Geology student I inadvertently renamed Ringwoodite to Rickwoodite in an exam because my igneous pet lecturer was called Dr. Rickwood. Therefore I think it's about time I had something named after me!!
It was good to put some faces to names and meet people who have commented on my images in the past. As for the SAS meeting, it was an interesting experience presenting (and seeing) my images using a projector on to a wall - I'm not sure my little Saturn stood up to being zoomed in on but it was fun anyway!
Quote:
Originally Posted by bartman
Great going there Mario,
I'll have to try a 'Mario' myself one day.
BTW how or what did you use to make the frame around your picture?. I have seen it on a few photos and thinking of doing something similar.
Cheers
Bartman
Bart,
I've created a image of just the frame in Photoshop. Each portion of text is a separate layer as is each side of the frame. The sides I''ve grouped together just so I don't accidentally move something. I then paste my image in as another layer and send it to the back so that the frame sits on top of it. Edit the text, flatten the image, save to a new file and there you have it. Nifty, eh!
