First trys at imaging Saturn

last night seemed like the first good clear night in ages!

I spent some time sketching and imaging the moon.
Then later checking out some clusters and M42.
So at about 5-ish Saturn was just about high enough over my roof to check it out.

My first time seeing this beauty was a few weeks ago and I have to say i was blown away!

Anyway...enough ramblings,
here are some shots taken with an ETX-125 & Webcam.
As ever.......
Any hints, tips, comments will be very much appreciated!

(No Barlow - the Cassini Division just about decipherable, as is some cloud formation. Total loss of colour for some reason?)

www.flickr.com/photos/franks_astrophotography/265913962/


(X2 barlow - almost 0 detail )

www.flickr.com/photos/franks_astrophotography/265890917/

I have seen shots of Saturn on Mike Weasner's ETX site taken
with the same set up as above and I was very impressed with the detail
and sharpness of the shots....
Yet I found it near impossable to bring out any division in the rings in registax. Anyone any ideas?

(and yes, get a bigger scope would be a great idea! :lol: )

Update...
This is the best I can pull from the avi's I took.

I'm going to try using the canon 350 and stack a bunch of images to
see what that turns out like....see if I can resolve the rings somewhat.

Geez, you must have been up late to catch that!

Just one thing pops to mind. My images were lacking colour definition when I left the webcam at the default gamma setting. Reducing this to something 10% or 20% fixed the problem though. In fact it was suggested to me on this very board.

I can't remember the other settings I used but I do remember getting best results by putting the gain down below 40-50% and then just modifying the shutter speed to change the brightness.

Hope that works out for you.

Trev

Full marks for the attempt Frank! Every good astrophographer has to start somewhere, it's all a steep learning curve, unfortunately, I don't have any tips for you, but keep at it!

You should see Saturn in my 3 inch apo, stunning.
Keith..

Hi Frank,
its a reasonable start, first thing I'd say is that the focus is a little off in the second image, keep an eye on the saturation and have all control under manual control, play around with them and you'll get there.

I wouldn't bother using the canon for saturn, stick with the webcam, how many frames did you stack, I usually find 1200 frames is the minimum useful number.

I was also thinking of going for it that morning but just couldn't get out of bed! :lol:

Well done Frank, a very credible first effort. It's clear from that first effort that some really top class stuff will be forthcoming from your stable once you have everything nailed down!

Congrats.