Last night was a comedy of errors, but I eventually got everything working and had time for one imaging run on Saturn before sunrise...I shoulda set the alarm for 3.30am instead of 4am, I left myself with too much to do and not really enough time.
Anyway, here is Saturn from this morning. I'm using my Lumenera LU075M camera at the moment while the Dragonfly Express is away being looked at - either it died or I killed it, not sure which one yet, but I've got the LU camera going under Linux now so I'll be using that for the next few weeks until the DX comes back.
The LU has some nasty artifacts and lines at high gain, you can see it best in the blue image here but they're also present in the other images. Astra Image has some really nice lowpass filtering that can get rid of these sorts of things, so they've been filtered out of the final image.
Equipment: 10" f/6 newtonian @ f/48
Lumenera LU075M camera
red & green: 15fps (66ms) and maximum gain for 2 minutes each
blue: 7.5fps (140ms) and about 50% gain for 2 minutes
hang on , on closer inspection, yours are simply fantastic!!!!!!!!
well done bird.
having met you and with your willingness to help us, these pictures seem to hold more than just an superb image. It is that little x factor that accompanies a noobies first image post, or a ripper like yours. A feeling of pride???? is the best way to describe it I think????
Thanks for the comments guys. DP, I feel like I still have a long way to go until I'm happy that I'm getting everything that I can out of this setup, if the weather cooperates then I'll be trying to make this a Saturn/Jupiter season to remember :-)
The best way to keep improving is to share ideas and try different things, I'm hoping that we'll all be much further along our respective curves by the end of the season next May ..
The problem with Saturn is, it looks the same every time.
At least with Mars and Jupiter, you potentially get a different face to look at each time.
You know, there's probably clouds n storms n stuff if we can get a good enough look...
One of the items on my list is to see something other than just smooth belts - something that's not an artifact :-)
Problem is, I don't really know what the rotation period is. There's some data from cassini that suggests it's about 10 hours, like Jupiter. That might be a problem.
Awsome shots Bird, makes me really want to learn how you do it.
I have tried with a few pics in registax, registar and iris, but have failed each time and given up, not having my mount tracking yet or polar aligned doesn't help me any either.
I will have to dedicate some time in reading how and what is the best way to use these programs, your pics definately inspire us newbies to want to achieve similar results.
hard to find words to describe, but that is one exceptionally beautiful piece of imaging - the colour in the banding is fantastic... and this from your backup camera
Anthony.....What can ANYONE say mate.....To my eyes it is world class!! That's simply stunning man! I can't stop looking at it. Oh man, that's GREAT! Should I shut up now??
The seeing this morning was fantastic.
Awsome shots Bird, makes me really want to learn how you do it.
