It's been almost 20 days since my last imaging session, combination of holidays and bad weather meant I hadn't had the telescope out for what felt like aaaaages.
The seeing looked ok naked eye on Saturday night early on, but by the time Saturn was high enough at 12am (even this shot was captured at 23° altitude) it had deteriorated and didn't improve. My first avi of the night (of a run of 4 before I gave up) produced the most acceptable result.
Seeing: 3/10
Transparency: 5/10
Stack of about 1000 frames from 3000 captured.
Gain was about 80% because of the transparency, and of course is very grainy as a result. ME deconvolution in astraimage, and then Levels adjusted in photoshop to set the blackpoint and get rid of the blue.
Thought you'd been a bit quiet with the planetary imaging of late Mike... you're certainly right about the importance of seeing and how critical it is to getting the best images. Plenty of detail here too in amongst the grain. Have you tried LR deconvolution on Saturn - I find it sharpens better than ME without burn out.
Hope you score some good seeing for the January Astrocamp.
I've been thinking a LOT about 'transparency' lately...when you say "trans 5/10" do you mean it was 50% cloudy?
The reason I ask is just recently I was out, & got mars/Saturn on the laptop screen & it was the BEST I've ever seen it! It was about 5 at the most seeing conditions. I could also turn the gain to zero & it still looked great, where as normally this is not the case for me...I usually have to have 50% plus gain to get a pleasing image on the screen. I'm thinking humidity in the air??
nice but at least you tried and got the cobwebs out Mike.
Quite literally, Dave! I cleaned my mirrors (primary and secondary), re-collimated and removed spiderwebs from inside my tube, (and killed 50 baby spiders on the outside of the tube) before taking this image!
Quote:
I've been thinking a LOT about 'transparency' lately...when you say "trans 5/10" do you mean it was 50% cloudy?
no, not 50% cloudy. I count transparency as how clear the sky is, even if it's 'clear' of clouds. You know sometimes the stars are just really bright, and other times really dim? It can be affected by high level clouds, moisture or smoke or anything else in the air.
And like you, if the transparency is good, you can lower the gain and still have a bright image - if it's bad, you need a higher gain to get the same brightness.
If that's the case, I've had terrible trans. ever since I bought the toucam! because that night I mentioned it was the 1st time EVER I've seen it like that. (not very encouraging If I only get one night every 2 mths *sigh*)
Just to keep on topic here: Nice saturn image again!....lol....Me like it!
great to have you back!!! ( i am still missing the two anthony's posting images however) Rumples also has been skipping church and not posted many planets!!!
A question about the cassinni division. I am yet to have great seeing, so my cassinni division is like yours. When viewed with the rings tipped down, the white ring just inside the division makes it look worse than it is, but when you do it asi style, for me it does not look as bad.
Cassini division all the way around seems to be the yard stick!
I am yet to collimate, take an image and then take it out of collimation and image again. I will be keen to see the results
nice mike. you have great image scale. do you always go for the bigest image you can? reducing the image scal would probably make it sharper when the seeing isnt up to it.
My thoughts exactly...smaller = less likely to see the grain.
Not sure if this is much better than the original
Thanks for letting me play...I need the practice! A slight burn-out in the centre from over stepping the mark with noise reduction/sharpening in neatimage (I think).
Actually, now that you mention it Dave (here we go with the self-analysis!)
While I was mucking about, I gave no thought whatsoever to what the 'true' colour of this planet is...I was getting it to suit my idea of how it should be...
Back on transparency, normally the transparency has been good here but over the last month or so, the upper atmosphere has constantly had a thin veil of cloud or smoke. My theory is that the constant burnoff regime by forestry activities (nonstop since last easter) here is causing it, perhaps the smoke is even circling the globe with the jetstream which seems to be holidaying at 40 degree latitudes.
