Finally, here is Saturn from earlier this morning. After having drenched my senses and filled up the notebook hard drive with the Moon, I pointed the C9.25 at old Kronos himself and grabbed 1024 frames.
Using the Quality and Difference slide bars, I stacked 559 for the following results. The colour seems a bit washed out and the Cassini Division isn’t resolved all the way round, but all in all, I’m pleased with the image given I had a miserable failure on Mars earlier in the evening.
C9.25
TeleVue x2.5 PowerMate
Philips ToUcam
1/25 sec at 10 fps.
559 from 1024 images in Registax3
well done, what is that black smudge on the rings at around 2am???
great detail!!!
Hi Dave
I think the smudge is an image processing artifact. On previous (failed) attempts, I recorded smudges on both sides, which seems to occur when the outer segments of the Cassini Division are "boiling" in the seeing and therefore smears into a smudge once Registax does its stuff.
Wow - what a difference some expert processing can do! Thanks Paul and thanks Mike, that's what I imagined Saturn should look like.
Mike - thanks for the before & after images, a brilliant demonstration of the techniques used to improve the image, and thanks for the tip on saturation too; it's a slider I have never yet dabbled with.
nice image dennis. lovely and sharp even if faded.... I think in the after processing pauls is too warm and mikes is too cold. a middle ground would be better