Saturn 15/02/05

[Comet Hunter]

Image taken at approx. 10:15pm on the night of 15/02, using my 3x Televue barlow. First time I've managed a clear distinctive polar region, and also a more cleaner cassini division then previously. Also spent abit more time/care playing around with the processing.

http://comethunter.com/images/150205saturn.jpg

Now that looks damn impressive. I have to start doing this astrophotography.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Nice shot Andrew

Details man details Is that normal size or enlarged? Processing /stacking programs. What's your cameras resolution, pixels size. Details, details

I'm looking foward to seeing your QC4000 in action if that's the normal size. About 4 times bigger than ToUcam.

[iceman (Mike)]

Awesome image scale!
Focus looks a tad off, or maybe it was bad seeing..
But what a nice shot, thanks for posting!

[Comet Hunter]

Sorry Paul, I needed my beauty sleep. Here ya go.....

Image was taken with QC + 3x Televue barlow. About 1/25th sec, low gain + gamma, mid brightness, 90% saturation, 15fps I think. Processed in Registax3, around 450/900 frames then I went through and deleted a few more that slipped through. Then abit of a fiddle with everything on the wavelets tab. Thought I'd try out this NeatImage Ice has mentioned a few times. Need to sit down and learn how/what each bit does in Registax as at the moment all I'm doing is playing around till it starts to look good.

Focus may have been off a tad, I usually zoom in and just eye it then zoom back out, but was still earlyish in the night (10-10:30pm) so may also be abit of turbulance thrown in for good measure. The blotchy bit on the lower half of the planet is from a bit of dust thats made its way on to the chip

[iceman (Mike)]

For focusing, you need to make yourself a hartman mask. Slew to a star and focus on the star. When the 3 points overlap into 1 with nice diffraction spikes, then your focus is good.
Slew back to Saturn and start your imaging.

To get rid of your dust motes, use a can of compressed air and blow them off. I've had to do it a few times on my ToUcam, and it's worth with the dob because the image moves across the whole chip.. If I was tracking, I could position the planet on an area of the chip with no dust motes.

You should think about getting an IR filter that screws into your 1.25" adapter, aparently it will result in better images, and it will also protect your CCD from the dust invasion!

Great image, you're really improving.

[Comet Hunter]

I did make a hartmann mask a few weeks back, but find there's still that little bit of uncertainty with the focus, will have to have a play with it to see if I can get some sharper spikes, plus I always leave the damn thing on

I've done a bit of reading up about getting a IR filter, but don't think it's worth it at the moment as I'm in the planing/research stages of upgrading the camera along with some nice astronomik filters , besides my adapter is an old bottomed out film canister super-glued to the camera housing

[iceman (Mike)]

ah well you can't put an IR filter on that

I've only once left the hartman mask on before imaging

Another thing that can cause the blurry out-of-focus look is pushing the magnification too hard when the seeing is bad.

Perhaps you should've gone with a 2x barlow instead of the 3x and maybe it would've been a bit sharper.

Still, great shot!

[beren]

...great image,well done

[bird (Anthony Wesley)]

Agreed, very nice image, much better than any Saturn I've managed.

Bird

[Comet Hunter]

Thanks for the comments guys! To be honest I was suprised to pull this much detail considering most (all) of the other QC shots I've seen around the net are rather ordinary when compared to what the Toucam can put out (not sure if that because there's not that many using the QC compared to the Toucam or not... )

Here's a non barlow shot from the same time +/- 20mins.. similar settings and processing...

[iceman (Mike)]

Nice shot, looks a bit sharper but still looks as though focus was just a smidge off. Great shot though, wish I could get something like that.

[rumples riot]

Nice stuff Andrew, really impressive.

[Comet Hunter]

Playing around with the avi abit more testing the 'Reference Frame' feature of Registax3, the usuall wavelet fiddle+some NeatImage adjustments ended up with this...a little bit more grainy but more detail (a nice compromise), I prefer it over the original.... http://comethunter.com/images/150205saturn2.jpg

Not sure whats happening with the flowery thing in the upper left corner...

[iceman (Mike)]

That's nice CH.. it looks like you got a pic of the ISS up in the top left