My best Saturn for the season

[rumples riot]

Hi all, well finally got through processing 986 frames from 1 0f the 6 AVI's that i took last night. Wow that is really hard work.

But am reasonably happy with this as it is a quantum leap up from my previous, see was around 2/5 and this is reflected in the image. My focus is still not perfect but very hard to do when the image is dancing round like a money on the street.

Still I am happy for the moment.

Comments.

[iceman (Mike)]

Great image Paul.. how many frames were there in total, and how many did you end up stacking?

It's still a little soft, but as you said is mostly likely the result of bad seeing. Also be careful how many frames you stack when the seeing is bad - if you stack too many, they're not going to all be good frames, so when you stack in some bad ones you'll end up softening the image and losing detail and sharpness.

Another trick I recently learnt, is once you get to the wavelets tab, before applying any adjustments to the wavelets, click on "RGB shift" and click "estimate". It does a good job of fixing up any red/blue colour shift due to imaging through the lower atmosphere.

I'd love a shot at processing one of your good avi's (compared to my wobbly avi's).. How big is a compressed one? Maybe I can hook up some ftp space for you to upload it to.

Great image, good scale!

[rumples riot]

Thanks Mike for the comments. I only used 80 images out of 946. I went into frame list and unchecked all the bad images just as you have suggested and fiddled with RGB shift but had to do it by hand.

I still have not compressed as yet the good AVI; only two I think but I will let you know as soon as I can.

Thanks anyway for all the help.

[iceman (Mike)]

eww @ unchecking the bad ones in registax, that'd take forever wouldn't it?

Try virtualdub to delete the bad ones, it should be a lot quicker.

Looking forward to your shots when you get some good seeing, it'll be awesome i'm sure.

[rumples riot]

Anyone else got some comments? Just want to know what you guys think?

[beren]

Nice one Paul , tried tonite as well but found it tough focusing and my images look pretty soft

[rumples riot]

Yeah really hard to get focus on Saturn, but still you got a good shot considering the conditions

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Good onya guys. With Saturn so low to the horizon from deep down south there, I'm amazed you've gotten anything but a blur! Perserverance pays off

FYI I've worked a bit of a sequence for myself when I get to the waveleting page.

1st, contrast (fairly low) and brightness (just below middle of the scale),

2nd, historgram adjustment (not too much from the dark end only) and blue, green red levels in that order,

3rd, RGB shift (usually have to move the blue up a notch or two and the red down about one rarely 2),

5th, couple of quick tests on the historgram again (I use a lot of resetting of the historgram, not the RGB, at this stage ), then onto the wavelets,

6th which I'm generally finding I'm only using numbers one and two (occasionally 3), 1 between 15 and 23 and 2 between 7 and 10.

7th Then fiddle about with the contrast and brightness again, leaving contrast fairly low but upping the brighness. Then on the final page

8th I use the lightness slider to lower the brighness, then muck around with the Hue and Saturation.

I'm usually fairly happy with the results by then. Just wish I could get more difinition between the layers on the planet. Need to practice on my Photoshop skills

Hope this helps in some way.

Cheers

[Robby]

Nice work guys.
Saturn is a toughy being so far North. Focussing can be a challenge especially if the seeing is coming & going.. Keep it up. Looks like I have some catching up to do in the planet stakes!!!