So-so Saturn 22/02/2005

[iceman (Mike)]

Hey guys.

The weather had been so bad lately, hadn't done any imaging since using Rod's LX200.. probably also didn't want to do any imaging with the dob again, seeing how the same technique and same capture settings produce such a better result

But anyway, back to the dob it was.

Seeing was fair to ok (4-5/10), I tried a few different settings though, mainly tried using 1/33 and 1/50s shutter with higher gain and gamma, trying to freeze the image before the rotation blurred it.

I took about 15 x 13s avi's with each set of capture settings and joined them together to make about 2600 frames each. I had no inclination to remove the bad frames by hand, so I just let registax try and find the best ones.

The colour ones didn't work out so well, the black&white ones I took turned out "ok", so I may as well post it.

FL: 2500mm
10" dob
ToUcam Pro II
Stack of 50 frames (out of 2600! maybe seeing was worse than I thought!)

[ving (David)]

hey dont mock the dob you!
thats a good pic!

[Comet Hunter]

I agree with ving! What was it about the coloured ones that was wrong Mike?

[iceman (Mike)]

There was nothing particularly wrong with it, it just wasn't that great an image.

The colour one was taken with 1/50s shutter and much higher gain, so there was a lot of noise. I tried stacking a lot of frames to reduce the noise, but the seeing was bad and so the cassini division doesn't line up in them.

To make the cassini division line up better, I had to stack only around 50 frames (same as the black and white one).

Here it is anyway.

[Comet Hunter]

Depending on how much more gain you used, might need to increase the shutter a little bit more (up into the hundreds) to help reduce the extra noise that comes with high gain.

A great nights viewing cant be fully appreciated without copping the odd bad one occasionally to keep things in perspective.