Newbie viewing planets

[sil (Steve)]

That looks like a processed image, it wouldn't have been taken with an eyepiece, usually video footage is taken with a camera that takes the place of the eyepiece and hundred of frames split out to process into one photo. It probably had a ton of black space cropped out of the image too. I think when you capture this way the camera gives you approximately the magnification of a 5mm eyepiece.

Again I doubt they saw saturn like that with an eyepiece or even in the video capture. Imagine water running down your monitor screen while you look at the picture and thats close to what you see live which is the atmospheric distortion. Takes a LOT of single frames to combine and process with wavelets to bring out the details. Again end user expectations. Go to a local astronomers club night and look through scopes people bring and you'll see for yourself what you actually get to see through setups of various sizes and budgets.

[iborg (Philip)]

Hi Nath

That is a great image, but, I think it is also cropped.

I have an 8" SCT, and I think the best I have seen image size wise is as though Saturn was an object, about 4mm diameter, at arms length.

That was probably with ~10mm eyepiece (I often use a zoom), 200x magnification.

It is hard to judge apparent size at the time, and harder to rely on memory.

I am usually looking from my backyard, and so I have not been able to convince myself I have definitely seen the Cassini division.

Philip

[Nath2099]

It looks like I'm realigning my expectations!

I'll grab a few other lenses and have another look anyway!

Apologies for hijacking the thread.

[Stonius (Markus)]

Also, be aware that colours show up in photographs, but with visual observing they are far less obvious, if they appear at all. It's all down to our eyes being an imperfect apparatus.

Whereas with post processing, you can easily bump contrast, which will increase colour saturation as well.

In my (admittedly limited) experience, I have never gotten more detail from an image than I saw visually on the day, but the details I did get on the photo were *right on the edge* of the limits of perception. It takes time, both in terms of time on the night teasing out those details from the wobbling atmosphere, and time in terms of practice; putting in the hours to pull as much detail from the object as possible.

I often think astronomy is kind of like an extreme sport for the eyes. :-)

-Markus

[SkyWatch (Dean)]

Originally Posted by Nath2099

It looks like I'm realigning my expectations!

I'll grab a few other lenses and have another look anyway!

Apologies for hijacking the thread.

Hi Nathan,

With an Esprit 120 you should be able to regularly get 150-200x. Your 12.5mm eyepiece only gives 67x, which will give nice sharp views of Saturn, but very small. I would be very surprised if a 4mm eyepiece doesn't work well for you (210x) quite often.
I usually get sharp images at 200x with my TSA102 which has a similar FL to your scope, even in the suburbs and with average seeing conditions. I use a TV 3-6mm Nagler zoom, and optimise the power for the conditions. Most nights I find the 4mm or 5mm FL work well- and on really good nights I can go to the 3mm (~270x)

All the best,

Dean