Saturn from December 6th

bird (Anthony Wesley) · #1 06-12-2005, 02:40 PM

After about 2 weeks of bad weather I was happy just to see Saturn again :-) The seeing was not very good, but I wasn't going to let that get in the way...

10" f/6 newtonian, 5x powermate + extension for 8x
Astronomik RGB filters, Dragonfly Express firewire camera

This is a composite of images taken between 3.45am and 4.30am.

regards, Bird

h0ughy (David) · #2 06-12-2005, 02:46 PM

Wow thats fantastic, and the colours!! Its a pleasure Bird, keep them coming!!

iceman (Mike) · #3 06-12-2005, 02:51 PM

Very nice as usual Anthony.. Have you had a chance to compare the 2 cameras yet?

[1ponders] (Paul) · #4 06-12-2005, 02:51 PM

That's awesome bird, especially considering how low in the north saturn is for you.

bird (Anthony Wesley) · #5 06-12-2005, 03:36 PM

Mike, I set out to compare them, but it's not as easy s I thought it would be. The kodak ccd has a totally different response curve to the sony ccd, so I got stuck wondering how I should compare them... the DX (kodak) is more blue sensitive, and the LU (sony) is more red sensitive...

Also the gain settings on the 2 cameras are not correlated - the LU has a max gain of 24db and the DX has a max of 30db and it's obvious when I compare them that these gain values are not related to anything.

But I have found a few differences - the LU has a lot more noise at high gain settings than the DX, and the DX is much more flexible in it's settings. I can make it do anything except wash dishes :-)

It still seems to me that the DX is the more sensitive of the two, but I just have to work out a fair comparison.

Bird

#6 06-12-2005, 04:06 PM

Spectacular Saturn image Bird!!! looking forward to seeing more too!

regards,CS

matt · #7 06-12-2005, 04:25 PM

That's great Bird. Was out visually observing the same time this morning. You're right about the seeing. It was all over the place. Very changeable.

That's a great effort. You've even captured the Encke. Pretty clear on the right-hand side.

Onya

ballaratdragons (Ken) · #8 06-12-2005, 04:37 PM

Not bad Bird. Nearly as good as mine

haha! That's is excellent Bird! Be proud mate. I hope I get pics like that one day. A long way to go yet but I'm determined!

davidpretorius · #9 06-12-2005, 05:53 PM

Nice one bird - saturn is tough to get details without tracking, but
I see you caught at least one cloud belt on the planet.

ken

all silliness aside, this is great!

bird (Anthony Wesley) · #10 06-12-2005, 10:06 PM

I wasn't real happy with that image, the seeing wasn't great but I thought it was better than the image turned out.

Anyway, nothing like whiling away the hours in more careful processing...This time I combined all my runs into one, so there were something like 7000 frames of red, 5000 of green and blue. So this is a composite image of all the runs taken over a time of about 1.5 hours.

It's definitely different to the first one, and I like it a bit better.

regards, Bird

rumples riot · #11 06-12-2005, 10:43 PM

Beautiful images Anthony, even with bad seeing, it is still very good. Incidently, are you using an extension tube? Your image scale is very good.

RB (Andrew) · #12 06-12-2005, 11:40 PM

They are excellent images Bird.
The first one seems more appealing to me though.
It looks sharper on my CRT screen.

Well done.

#13 07-12-2005, 12:22 AM

Holy snapping Duck Poo, that is awesome. You have once again raised the bar to "astronomical" heights.

asimov (John) · #14 07-12-2005, 01:48 AM

I've been gazing at these photo's for awhile now Bird & trying to think of something to say. I really am at a loss for words. To say their fantastic/great/spectacular is somehow an understatement.

Amazing stuff Anthony..

iceman (Mike) · #15 07-12-2005, 06:15 AM

I think I like the first one better too, Anthony.. it looks a bit smoother.

The second one appears to have introduced some artifacts around the edges of the globe.

Both exceptional images, though.

Robert_T · #16 07-12-2005, 06:29 AM

Hey Bird! I just grabbed my first avi (ever) of Saturn this morning and was sitting down to process when wham I see this .... should I even bother

how you manage to pull an image like that out of mediocre seeing is amazing... any secrets or just plain sheer hard work (and fast frame rates

)

beautiful stuff

Dennis · #17 07-12-2005, 06:36 AM

That is a wonderful image of Saturn Anthony, and a marathon efort in acquiring and processing it. Great job and well done.

Cheers

Dennis

gbeal · #18 07-12-2005, 06:41 AM

The usual high standard that we have come to expect from you Bird.
If it won't wash the dishes though, will you return it under warranty?

asimov (John) · #19 07-12-2005, 06:42 AM

'WHAM' is right Robert! Now using my toucam for what it was designed for....WEBCAMMING.

bird (Anthony Wesley) · #20 07-12-2005, 01:45 PM

Thanks for the comments guys. The first image might be more aesthetically pleasing, but the second image is definitely a better representation of the planet. Look at the width of teh cassini division, and also the width of the "gap" between the planet and the rings where the planets shadow is cast.

These are both things that get artificially widened when the planet is over-processed, and it's clearly evident in the first image I posted.

regards, Bird