My first Saturn this apparition

[iceman (Mike)]

This morning at 4am I was up imaging Saturn after doing Mars last night.

I was so excited to get my first Saturn of the season, and my first since I got the EQ platform and the 5x powermate, I just had to process these before the Mars ones

The seeing started out excellent, but deteriorated after 20 minutes unfortunately.
I had to set the gain to almost 100%, as the growing dawn sky plus a light hazy cloud cover meant it was too dim with anything else.

The first avi was the sharpest, but my platform wasn't properly aligned and the planet drifted off the FOV after only a few hundred frames, so it's very grainy and I had to do some blurring. It's the one on the top left.

The one on the top right is a stack of 900 frames from a later avi, in both this one and the previous one, gamma was zero.

The lower one is with a higher gamma and I captured for 5 minutes (3000 frames @ 10fps), the result is a stack of 1200 frames.

Processed in Registax, AstraImage and NeatImage, and final colour balance fix in Photoshop.

10" dob on EQ platform, Toucam + 5x powermate @ 10fps.

It's waaaay better than any of my Saturn's from early this year, I couldn't believe how big it was on the preview screen!

Comments welcome! I'm excited!

Off to a meeting, back later for Mars!

[iceman (Mike)]

The low one (with the higher gamma) shows the crepe ring, which is pretty cool too!

[bird (Anthony Wesley)]

Hi Mike - you've come a long way in just a few months, those images are waay better than where you started, you've gotta be happy with that.

Bird

[h0ughy (David)]

All that practice on Mars has given you the edge for this one Mike

[vindictive666 (John)]

very nice i gotta win lotto

[davidpretorius]

I know just how you feel. In your case the results show, but it is hard to convey the excitement you get when that image comes up on the screen regardless of the quality!!! I still go back to my first pics in july and get a real buzz. It is funny, i do not look at them as duds, i really like them even though I am strarting to produce much better final images.

Yours are great!!!!!

Now to Mr Peach's gain / gamma.

From that article, i am a little confused.

Firstly, Bird mentioned at star camp, that set the gamma to 50% as you can always adjust back out later.

Here you have the gain higher because of the conditions.

When you guys were discussing lots of frames and graininess are we discussing gamma or gain????

[bird (Anthony Wesley)]

DP, gamma is a bit of a tricky subject, and the "right" setting is more of a black art than science if you ask me :-)

It's good to adjust the gamma down a bit, cause that increases the visible contrast in the image so it makes life easier for you or me as we try to get focus correct etc - but it's also a lossy process that discards some of the image data so we don't want to adjust it down too far or we end up with only a few colour levels in our image instead of all possible colours.

Try setting the gain to somewhere around halfway, if the image starts looking too dark then bring it back up a little.

Gain is another thing entirely - you should crank that up until your image is nice and bright without oversaturating. There's no information loss unless you over- or under-expose.

We would have been talking about gain in the earlier posts, not gamma.

regards, Bird

[Hitchhiker]

Congratulations, Mike. They are great images!

[TidaLpHasE]

Great shots Mike, i have been watching for a few days dreaming of getting any shots at all, polar alignment keeps getting the better of me

Well done.

[iceman (Mike)]

Thanks for the compliments guys.. trust Bird to do a Saturn on the same morning as me though

Here's a reprocess of the avi from the bottom image up above.. It's a bit noisier but I think the colour is a bit better and the CD a bit sharper.

Nothing else to do but reprocess avi's when it's cloudy..

[davidpretorius]

great colour, and i believe you are right!

i will be switching back to normal mode tonight fingers crossed as raw mode is giving me the you know whats with saturn. It was great on mars, but no go atm with saturn

[asimov (John)]

Hi Mike.

I've been trying to reply here for the last couple of days, but bigpond is playing up bad my end.

Anyway, damn nice pictures mate! You certainly have come a long way!

[iceman (Mike)]

Thanks John!

[Robert_T]

Beautiful Mike! I'm looking forward to having a go at Saturn this weekend - if I get half as good I'll be happy.

cheers,

[RB (Andrew)]

Excellent shots there Mike,
it's going to be a great season for Ringo and his friend Goliath.

[atalas]

Looking good Ice .

[rumples riot]

This is pretty good Mike, a major leap from your images earlier in the year. Done very well.

[Starkler (Geoff)]

Originally Posted by rumples riot

This is pretty good Mike, a major leap from your images earlier in the year. Done very well.

Hear Hear

[Dennis]

Great images Mike. Can't wait for some clear weather in Brisbane as I am now hooked on the ToUcam from seeing all the IIS efforts on Mars & now Saturn.

Cheers

Dennis