I got back yesterday afternoon from a great time in Queensland, part holiday and part imaging fieldtrip :-)
The main target for the trip was saturn, which transits at a lowly 33 degrees from canberra, but from where we were staying in Rockhampton it reached 45 degrees - enough for me to have a go at it!
Leisa & I stayed on a farm called Henderson Park - I can thoroughly reccommend it to anyone that wants to experience frogs, echidnas, snakes, gekkos, birds, etc etc in the wild.
For most of the 2 weeks we were there, the skies were clear but the wind was blowing from the east. I found a couple of nights when the wind dropped, and one of these (17th April) was what I would call a "hubble night", when for the first time I really felt that I was at the limit of what my camera could resolve.
On Jupiter that night, not only were the small white storms in the polar region clearly defined, I could see details *inside* them, live on the laptop screen. That's a first for me...
So, onto some of the images. I'm still processing them up but here are three of the best (so far) from the bunch.
All images were taken with the following equipment:
10" f/6 newtonian, Primary by Mark Suchting of Berowra (Deep Sky Optics)
- 4x TV Powermate
- TruTek filter wheel
- Astronomik RGBI filters
- fire-i modded camera @ 25fps
- Losmandy G-11 mount
- Linux + coriander for capturing, Registax, Astra-Image, and the GIMP for processing, plus some custom s/ware for centering.
Now (finally) for a saturn, my first of this season and with saturn vanishing into the west probably my last until the end of the year.
This time I imaged at 12.5fps, and captured 5000 frames of red and green, and 10,000 frames of blue. The ccd is not very sensitive in blue, so the signal-to-noise is quite low. I compensated a bit by grabbing 2x as many frames.
The capture run went for more than 25 minutes, so no chance of getting any cloud detail, but lots of nice bands etc.
I think the CD is too wide in this image, probably caused by overprocessing, but at an altitude of 45 degrees that was the best I could manage.
One more Jupiter, this one processed differently to the others, using the FFT filter in Astra Image to bring out detail in addition to the usual gamma adjust, LR deconvolution etc.
The images you see here are pretty much the first & last from the session, so the GRS was only just coming into view when I ran out of good viewing. BUT I have enough data for an animation of about 20 frames, so you never know...
The temperature profile in Rockhampton was much more conducive to this kind of imaging that I find in Canberra. The sunset temp was about 25C and overnight minimum temp about 19C. My cooling gear had no problem keeping it all together. Compare that to current canberra climate - 20C at sunset and overnight low of 8C :-(
Of course the mozzies liked the conditions too. I think I personally fed every flying insect for miles around. They just couldnt resist the lure of a laptop screen. It was kinda amusing watching insects crawling around on the screen, drawn to the live video image of Jupiter. I had to keep swatting them out of the way to see what was going on.
Welcome back, bird. I was starting to suffer withdrawls. Now I get an overdose.
In a word -Stunning- Anthony. Gary I think I'll just join you on the sidelines and clap . Seriously brilliant.
Gee if I'd known you were coming up this way bird I would have crash tackled you at the highway and kidnapped you here for a few day for some capture and processing tutorials.
Last edited by [1ponders]; 28-04-2005 at 10:45 AM.
Maybe next time Paul :-) I went the inland way through Miles, Toowoomba etc. On the way back I only had a couple of days to get home so I drove about 900km per day :-)
Next time I'll try and allow a bit more time at the end for visiting.
You would have had some lovely dark skies out Miles way. I used to go out with a girl from Drillham (I think that's how its spelt) near Miles. Blackest skies after the northern end of Fraser Island that I can remember. Not much humidity either out there.
What can I say, my attempts of late have been pretty good, but pale into insignificance compared to these lovely shots. Anthony you are the undisputed master. I have seen shots from guys in Hong kong, America, Philipines, and many other countries; no one produces the same quality shots that you do. I am glad to say that you are an Aussie.
Now its time for you to help me get to this level.
although if you come back with images like that everytime, go away again! 
![[1ponders]'s Avatar](../vbiis/customavatars/avatar45_9.gif){kind=avatar}
Gary I think I'll just join you on the sidelines and clap . 
