saturn 31-5-08

[AlexN]

well... brisbane skies opened up for a 40 - 50 minute period about an hour ago... figured I'd use that time seeing as I hadnt seen the night sky in 4 or 5 days... I think my focus was slightly out as is the coloring (my colorblindness doesn't help..) but I'll post these images anyway...

Nothing ground breaking... I'm happy with them though.. Guess thats what counts..

[leon]

Alex, man they are just brilliant images so sharp I actually like the darker coloured one, but they are all top shots, well done.

Leon

[AlexN]

Thanks Leon, Glad you liked them.

[netwolf]

Alex, the focus looks good to me. I assume you are taking these with your dob, and hand tracking them. If that is so then hats of to you.

[AlexN]

Cheers Fahim,

yep, hand tracked with the dob and a 2x barlow...

[edwardsdj (Doug)]

Great images Alex. The focus seems spot on to me

[AlexN]

good to hear... i suppose it was just how I saw it through the capture screen on the laptop, it didnt seem focused so I instantly started telling myself it wasnt.. I still have a few more AVI's from the session to edit, I'll see how they come up... Judging by this weather we're having I might even get a run over jupiter this morning... waiting for the heavens to open up for me

[edwardsdj (Doug)]

Hey Alex,

I find focus really hard to judge too. When the seeing is bad the planet blurs in and out of focus all the time so you have to judge the ponit at which it is in focus for the highest percentage of the time.

I've only had one night of reasonable seeing since starting imaging early this year where I was able to see the planet clearly focused on the computer screen most of the time - hence my avatar.

I can't see any stars in Brisbane at the moment. I'll be really amazed if you are able to get another Jupiter image tonight!

Take care,
Doug

[AlexN]

yeah.. just went outside, can see jupiter, but theres alot of low level cloud and its in and out all the time... not going to bother setting up... I suppose considering I was lucky to get the saturn images..

I noticed with my last jupiter shots that the planet seemed very well focused for the majority of the time it was in frame. grs and equatorial belts were all visible during capture... perhaps its a matter of learning to trust that 'gut feeling'

[AlexN]

heres one more, this one is actually the result of stacking all the frames from all my AVI's during the night.. 607 frames, through registax4, curves, unsharp mask and ME deconvolution in ps cs2.

dont know if its any better/worse than the others...

posting it anyway!

[Robert_T]

Hey Alex well done for getting anything at all out of a Brisbane sky at the moment...though I was getting desperate enough to try for a pic of Saturn through a sucker hole last night myself, but by the time I'd decided to try there were no holes left to sucker me

Thin cloud might be affecting your colour balance too - always hard to get colour good when there's thin cloud about.

cheers,

Rob