Thought I'd have a bash at Saturn

[Ian]

it's been a while, but using my Raw modified Toucam I took this of Saturn last Friday...



Details: about 700 frames of 1000, stacked in K3 and worked over in PS (levels sharpening and the like).

It's a bit soft, but then I did collimate the scope after taking the AVI  

Taking John's advice, (I'd put the blue fringe down to dispersion, but with a little Photoshop adjustment, and a hint more sharpening)

[JohnP]

Wow...! nice to see an image from you & a very good one as well... looks like RGB are slightly mis-aligned - Registax can sort that out for you & also if you adjust wavelets 6 & 5 slightly it really sharpens it up..

Great image & lets have some more...

John

[Fay]

That is really nice Ian.

I would like to get one as nice.

Fay

[JohnP]

Hi Ian, Looks a lot better - no colour fringes now & sharper as well - That really is very good - Have you been practising over the last few years & not telling us.....?

Cheers,  John

[Tony G]

Ian,
nice image and as John said try registax to process the avi and you may see some change.

Tony G

[Ian]

I get mixed results from Registax Tony. Sometimes it'll do a really good job, I like the image selection tool (the quality/power graph) but often I get the feeling the end result after playing with the wavelets looks "Registaxed". When I processed this image, I used K3 to do the stacking and then Photoshop to sharpen and histogram stretch (the subs are very dark due to Saturn being quite dim and I use a 5x powermate).

I'm not confident in one workflow to use it exclusively, so I play about with a few different ones, using different selection criteria and tools just to see what looks best. The trick is to try and remember what works and what doesn't for next time.

[Rocket Pooch]

Hi Ian,

That Saturn is similar to the results I've been geting this year with the VC200L which have been a whole lot worse than last years efforts, maybe its something to do with how small it is at the moment.

Having said that its very good, if I can evey be bothered I'll get that newt of mine out and try it again.

Chris

[Ian]

it is certain a very dim target at the moment I had the gain at 100% when I took that and it still barely used the top half of the histogram. The seeing wasn't good either really, the criteria I used to select subs was whether or not the cassini division was visible or not. That got rid of half of them...

I wonder if getting new coatings put on my mirrors would help. Or another couple of inches of aperture.

Roll on Jupiter, that's certainly nice and bright

[JohnP]

Yes but very low this year... I think it's max is only around 17 deg from horizon....

[Ian]

bugger. I hadn't checked that.

So my idea of avoiding buying a new camera to really crack planetary is going to be scuppered...

I really hope I can get my SC3 working properly, I'm not sure I can take the stress of trying to justify an Atik. As nice as they are... especially the 16HR.

[JohnP]

Yes - I can't justify £1200 on the 16HR but £350 on the 16ic isn't too bad & I think it'll take me to the next level - cooled & 16 bits, no amp glow....

John

[Rocket Pooch]

Ian,

I'm ordering one of these this weekend: -

http://www.astronomycameras.com/en/products/firewire-cameras/mono/dmk21af04as/

have a look at the 0 compression and FPS rate, should make a good Planetary imager.

Chris

[Ian]

it's interesting, but not much more than toucam. it's got the same sort of CCD (although a mono one) and an 8-bit adc. it's big advantage as I understand it is the lack of any compression at all. I'd be interested in your results from it.