Saturn this morning - 10th October

iceman (Mike) · #1 10-10-2006, 08:14 AM

Hi all

Here's my second Saturn for the season, taken this morning at 04:41am. Saturn was at 18° altitude, but the sky was lightening fast and I couldn't wait until it got any higher.

Captured with the 2x barlow and DMK21AF04, seeing was horrible and visually no detail could be seen through a 5mm eyepiece (not even the CD).

I captured for 1 minute on each colour channel @ 15fps and 1/15s exposure. I couldn't go for 30fps because there wasn't enough light coming in and the image would've been too dim. Even at 1/15s exposure, gain was at 85%.

180 frames were stacked from each channel. Processed in registax, AstraImage and Photoshop.

As a comparison, the second image shows just the red channel, captured using the 3x barlow and shows the increased image scale, however the seeing simply did not support any more focal length and the green and blue channel (especially) were horrible.

Thanks for looking.

RB (Andrew) · #2 10-10-2006, 08:38 AM

Even that is way better than my best, I can only imagine what you'll achieve when the season is in full swing for loupy !

Keep them coming Mike, we love them.

PS. At the end maybe you can make one of those montages again showing the progress of Saturn through the season.

Lester · #3 10-10-2006, 08:41 AM

Nice image Mike.

Another month and you will be putting out some crackers.

Dennis · #4 10-10-2006, 08:55 AM

Keep on teasing us Mike, with what's to come!

Cheers

Dennis

Harb · #5 10-10-2006, 11:42 AM

Mike what sort of EQ Platform do you use and where did you get it?
I am looking for something to put my 12" Lightbridge on.......
Nice pix by the way, hope I can become half as good!!

cheers
John

John K · #6 10-10-2006, 02:09 PM

Great start Mike! Cannot wait for this object to get higher!

iceman (Mike) · #7 10-10-2006, 07:42 PM

Thanks for the comments, guys.. Saturn seems to be much harder this year.. although it's only early in the season it's probably too early to call, but along with the low altitude, it's also much dimmer, most likely (as Bird pointed out) due to the tilt of the rings, than last year - so it requires more gain and lower shutter to get a bright enough image.

It's crying out for more image scale, but I just haven't had a good morning yet in which to increase the focal length and get a nice large image with more evident detail.

Harb, I got my EQ platform from www.roundtableplatforms.com in the US. I've had mine for about 15 months. Petra (spacezebra) just got one recently for her 12" lightbridge, so she'd be able to give you some current costs for shipping etc.

Brian Reed is a great guy to deal with. He's a member of the forum too (Brian) and checks in semi-regularly. He's using some of my images on his website to promote the astrophotography capabilities of the platform

Thanks again for your comments, I hope to get more over the next few days while i'm on holidays. I still have 2 sessions worth of moon imaging to process as well

Harb · #8 10-10-2006, 08:46 PM

Thanks for that Mike...PM sent to Petra...
While I am here, that camera of yours seems to do a very nice job, have you compared it to say a Meade DSI pro II (I have one but are yet to use it), I was wondering how the meade may stack up (pardon the pun) against yours.....

cheers
John