(Better) Saturn Adelaide - 10/5/12

[swannies1983 (Dan)]

After my first attempt at imaging Saturn this year (see here), I went out and took some more video after collecting some M83. I initially wasn't going to bother shooting Saturn as skippy weather predicted bad seeing (4-5) but I was surprised at how good the seeing was at around 11pm.

Details
Scope: 8" Newt
Camera: unmodded toucam
Barlows: 2x TeleVue and 2x barlow
2400 frames with about 1000 stacked in Registax

[Quark (Trevor)]

Thats a pretty good result there Dan, reckon you should have a play with AutoStakkert 2, you will likely find that it does a better job of multi point aligning than R6.

Regards
Trevor

[swannies1983 (Dan)]

Thanks Trev. I'll have a look at it.

[Rigel003 (Graeme)]

Excellent result for a Toucam, Dan. Nicely processed too.

[swannies1983 (Dan)]

Cheers. Yep, fairly happy with the image given the equipment used. Hope to get some better seeing at some point.

[Paul Haese]

Pretty good Dan. I found that Skippy sky cannot predict well in SA. The topography affects the predictions and the jet stream is not the only influence to good or bad seeing.

Nor does it work well for cloud prediction. I have a few years worth of data myself now and it is around 71% wrong. I tend to think the US data is not as good as the Australian data. Although even the Bureau gets things wrong a lot of the time.

[Shiraz (Ray)]

really good result Dan. Regards Ray

[swannies1983 (Dan)]

Thank Paul and Ray

Paul: I have found skippy to be OK for cloud prediction (last night be an exception as it predicted clear skies after about 10pm). Mind you, I have only been using it since mid last year. I generally find it more accurate than the Weatherzone one.

I haven't really looked at its seeing predictions. I was hoping to go out last night if the clouds cleared as it was predicting 8-9 on the seeing scale. Like you said, it probably wouldn't have been that good anyway.

[Clayton]

Very nice Dan