saturn 18th December 2006

bird (Anthony Wesley) · #1 19-12-2006, 11:32 AM

Like Mike I decided last night to go imaging despite the awful looking sky conditions - blue smoke haze everywhere, high cloud, yuk!

Anyway, the conditions were pretty stable around 4:30am or so when I grabbed the best image of the night - the smoke in the air meant I was using 14fps instead of my normal 23fps - ie lost almost 40% transparency compared to a clear night.

Details:

11m focal length, 13.1" mirror @ f/33
Red/Green: 14fps, max gain, 2 minutes
Blue: 9fps, max gain, 2 minutes
Astronomik RGB filters, Dragonfly Express monochrome camera
ppmcentre/registax4/astra-image/gimp

no resizing, this is the actual image size.

cheers, Bird

iceman (Mike) · #2 19-12-2006, 11:35 AM

WOW!

Awesome Anthony, best of the season right there.

I haven't been able to capture the crepe ring properly this season, with the transparency being so poor I just can't get enough light coming in. What hints of it I capture, usually disappear during the processing and sharpening

You've captured it very naturally. Top stuff.

Excellent image scale, great detail. Hopefully a sign of things to come!

matt · #3 19-12-2006, 11:46 AM

Very nice Anthony.

I love the banding on the planet and you've done a very nice job with the rings. CD all the way round which is no small feat given they are closing up by the minute

janoskiss (Steve H) · #4 19-12-2006, 12:00 PM

Beautiful shot Bird! Thank you for posting it.

RB (Andrew) · #5 19-12-2006, 12:18 PM

Awesome Anthony, beautiful shot !

jjjnettie (Jeanette) · #6 19-12-2006, 12:23 PM

Yep, the best so far.

ving (David) · #7 19-12-2006, 12:40 PM

yep as mike said, best of the season so far

you have plenty of tie to capture the crepe ring yet mike

excellent image anthony

Robert_T · #8 19-12-2006, 12:53 PM

Hi Bird, what a fabulous Saturn.

Everything we've come to expect from you. Very nice, natural looking but with all the detail. Surprised you use such a long exposure 1/23rd normally, this would be what I'd do with my smaller scopes... maybe I'm under-exposing. WIll have to give 1/14th or similar a try!

cheers,

matt · #9 19-12-2006, 12:56 PM

Longer exposure would be needed to compensate for the misty/cloudy conditions and the associated loss of light I'm guessing

iceman (Mike) · #10 19-12-2006, 01:06 PM

Correct, Matt.

bird (Anthony Wesley) · #11 19-12-2006, 01:12 PM

Thanks for the kind comments guys, the weather around here has been quite depressing, especially all the smoke and stuff from the fires to our west and south.

There was a small window of good seeing - about 30 minutes around 4.30am, before and after that it was very poor. With such a low transit altitude it's very important to grab it at it's highest elevation.

Robert - the exposure is normally matched to the focal length and image size. If you use a long focal length (I used 11,000mm in this case) then the image gets dimmer and a longer exposure is needed. If I was using a shorter focal length then the image would be smaller and brighter, and I could get away with shorter exposures.

cheers, Bird

Dennis · #12 19-12-2006, 03:09 PM

Gee that is a stunning image of Saturn Anthony, just beautiful. Hmm, not sure if I'll post my ToUcam effort from this morning now.

Cheers

Dennis

bird (Anthony Wesley) · #13 19-12-2006, 03:11 PM

c'mon - you know you want to...

matt · #14 19-12-2006, 03:11 PM

Do it, Dennis!!!!

Dennis · #15 19-12-2006, 03:16 PM

Hmm, too much humiliation on my plate right now; what with the English cricket team and the loss of the Ashes. Not sure if I could cope with much more this close to Xmas.

Cheers

Dennis