Saturn 5th January - from Tassie

[davidpretorius]

Ok , jetstream was not yellow any more and the stars had a slight twinkle. Mars thru the 5mm vixen had slight colour split ie blue up top and red down bottom, so seeing wasn't great, but a lot better than it was.

Telescope was left outside to cool and ice packs were added to the bottom of the mirror cell. At least this kept the mirror within 2 degrees of the rapidly falling ambient. Also left the sucking exhaust fan on as well

3am: 2.5 degrees ambient and 4.5 degree mirror. It had been 19 degrees at 8.30pm!!!

Anyway, made sure collimation was right - check!
Raw mode back to std colour for toucam - check!

Temp swayed between 1.5 degrees and 2.5 degrees for the two hours.

Transparency was 10/10 - no moon no cloud!

I have 2 videos to start processing of saturn at 50% gain and 75% gain.

Here are some to start

1. 50% gain - complete video with 95% (54 frames)gradient limit - soft wavelets
2. 50% gain - complete video with 90% (248 frames)gradient limit - medium wavelets
3. 50% gain - complete video with 85% (619 frames)gradient limit - medium wavelets
4. 50% gain - complete video with 80% (1849 frames)gradient limit - medium wavelets
5. 50% gain - new PPMcentre to grade the best 50 images, stacked in registax, no wavelets

First thing i am happy with is the colour, it is finally looking right and secondly, i am getting better at judging seeing. I could see the cassini division thru the 5mm vixen, but as you can see, the cassini division on video has not come out all the way around. So i would put the seeing as 5 or 6 out of 10.

I 5x powermated the 5mm vixen on both saturn and jupiter and was happy with the result. On a great seeing night (8 or 9 or 10 /10), i believe that this could be used as proper viewing setup!

I still have to do the 75% gain and also LR or ME deconvolution etc, but i cam happy i am on my way finally with saturn.

[asimov (John)]

Dave...What can I say?? They are positively great! I'm so glad you've nailed Saturn at last!!!! Lovely colours too. Jupiter has come out 'as expected' mate...another 3 or 4 weeks & you'll be getting stunners of Jupiter. Good colour on Jupiter too.

Great work!

[asimov (John)]

One more thing...Which way is 'up' on Saturn? I've noticed half the imagers post saturn pics the way you've got it, & the other half (me included) with post 'em the other way around?

[davidpretorius]

i get confused too, starry night seems to have the planet like i do, but i thought the image is reversed and upside down????

maybe the toucam should be the other way up and then i would be right?

[davidpretorius]

Ok, 500 out of 2400 frames 50% gain, sorted via ppmcentre.

soft wavelets, 5x3 LR decovolution, unsharp mask max 2.0, and a median 3x3

[davidpretorius]

same again for 500 frames, but with the wavelets set at mediuim and hard, for medium, i could afford a 5x2 LF deconvolution and a 1.5 unsharp mask and the hard wavelets, 3 x 1.3 LR deconvolution, no unsharp mask

I will process 1500 frames now and then compare the whole lot with a 75% gain setting

[asimov (John)]

Very nice mate!

[Robert_T]

Hi DP, excellent stuff and I especially admire the very thorough scientific approach to the settings. Reckon the 3x3 median is the pick on them. Have you tried a despeckle filter in Astra Image to reduce the grain a smidge.


cheers,

Excellent Dave! well done, your improving with every post

Originally Posted by asimov

One more thing...Which way is 'up' on Saturn? I've noticed half the imagers post saturn pics the way you've got it, & the other half (me included) with post 'em the other way around?

I believe in Dave images North is pointing down.

regards,CS

[matt]

Top effort Dave

Quick question: what did you do differently this time compared to the image you posted in my thread of my first ever Saturn pic????

[Chrissyo (Chris)]

Nice shots! I like the colour, and the cassini division is quite bold. I'm also quite jelous of your image scale!

[RB (Andrew)]

Great shots David, colour is great too.

Well done.