Saturn a few days after Opposition.

[Retrograde (Pete)]

Hi All,

last weekend on the Friday night I set up to do some planetary imaging and try to catch the opposition of Saturn. The seeing was pretty good due to a break in the jet stream so it was a chance to see what I could capture with my scope's modest (by planetary-imaging standards) 190mm aperture.

I took the opportunity to capture some of Saturn's moons using a wider ROI window and used the second stack to create a HDR-composite. I hadn't tried that before and getting the exposure right was quite tricky with Mimas so close to the blown-out image of Saturn. I didn't seem to pick up Iapetus or Hyperion even though they should have been within the frame - more exposure required perhaps?

Telescope: Skywatcher MN190, 4 x Powermate
Camera: ZWO ASI120MC
Exposure: Best 2800 of 8000 frames captured in Sharpcap, (best 500 of 3000 for the moons).

C & CC welcome,
Pete

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

Nice one Pete

[Retrograde (Pete)]

Originally Posted by Camelopardalis

Nice one Pete

Thanks Dunk!

[h0ughy (David)]

One Day I'll get something as good as that, awesome shot

[Retrograde (Pete)]

Originally Posted by h0ughy

One Day I'll get something as good as that, awesome shot

Thanks Dave - much appreciated.

[Dennis]

A great series Pete, these are very nice and I love the natural look.

I think Hyperion was on the other side of Titan and as far away from the disc, but Iapetus was much further right of stage, the other side of Titan and I suspect you would have had to move Saturn off-frame at left to bring Iapetus in?

Phoebe was even further away.

Cheers

Dennis

[multiweb (Marc)]

Great close up Pete. Love that widefield view with all the moons though. Tops.

[Retrograde (Pete)]

Originally Posted by Dennis

A great series Pete, these are very nice and I love the natural look.

I think Hyperion was on the other side of Titan and as far away from the disc, but Iapetus was much further right of stage, the other side of Titan and I suspect you would have had to move Saturn off-frame at left to bring Iapetus in?

Phoebe was even further away.

Cheers

Dennis

Thanks Dennis.

The attached pic below from my Gas Giants app shows the state of play at the time I took the image. I stretched the image of the moon's within an inch of its life and I was able to spot the faintest smudge in the location of Hyperion. No sign of Iapetus however (my capture image was larger than the final cropped version so it should have been within the frame).

Originally Posted by multiweb

Great close up Pete. Love that widefield view with all the moons though. Tops.

Thanks Marc!

[Dennis]

Thanks Pete - I mistakenly took Fri 13th to be the date of the image and not 6th.

Cheers

Dennis