Saturn through a twenty-incher!

This shot of Saturn was taken by Dave Lillis and I on the 8th of April this year
at one of our clubs observation nights.

Not a mind-blowing image by any means, but, when you think about how we
made it you may think otherwise (or us insane).

On the night in question we had all brought our gear out to the clubs site on top of a mountain in Boher.
The usual 'greatest hits' of equipment, ETX's, LX's, Binos et cetera,
all dwarfed by Daves' newly acquired 20'' Obsession.

Around half way through the night while we were taking a well earned tea break I asked the question,
"I wonder what an AVI of Saturn through the monster Dob would come out like".
(It 'just so' happend I had my webcam & laptop with me )
After a couple of minutes laughing about it Dave said
"What the hell" and so at 1AM in the freezing cold without a clue
what we were doing we set about the task!

So picture the scene:
Dave on the top leg of a stepladder holding an eyepiece in one hand and
the webcam in the other.
I'm at the bottom holding up the laptop in my hand at chest height
(coz' the USB cable barely reached all the way up to the eyepiece)
Then Dave would position the scope so Saturn was out of the eyepiece.
(Remember this this has no tracking!)
Then quickly, shove in the webcam and shout 'NOW'
I would then start recording, after a few seconds Saturn comes flying past.
Out of a 10 second AVI there would end up bieng only around 2 seconds
where all the planet is in the frame.

So we did this about 20 times.
(With Mikkel Bo Rasmussesn and John Murphy giving moral support!)

Some of the AVI's picked up nothing because as you can immagine
its kinda hard to get the 'predicted' track of Saturn right with such a
big scope at such high magnification.

So with the AVI's recorded, it was down to a hard slog at the PC to
get something usable from them.
I had to rip the Bitmaps from each of the 15, 10 second captures,
then by hand save all the frames that were OK (372) into a seperate file.

Then it was just a case of processing them in Registax.

Just to give you an Idea here is a still from one of the AVI's
(the unprocessed frames are better than the finished images through
my ETX-125!)
This will also give you an idea of the size of Saturn you see through the eyepiece of a 20'' Dob!



All in all it was great fun.
The 20'' is just simply an awesome scope!
With the right gear and good conditions the images through it would be amazing.

If I had one....I'd install a servo cat for tracking.
The possibilities of what you could photograph through this beast are endless!
Ultimately though this scope is for visual use, and let me tell you,
You colud NEVER get tired looking through the likes of it.

Thanks again Dave for letting us all go pawing at your new baby!

Who needs Faulty Towers?

Anybody who saw those shenannigans would have called the police.

"Terrorist suspects plotting a mortar attack up in the hills!".

That is some unguided image!
Aperture really is everything.

Peter

Anybody who saw those shenannigans would have called the police.

Want to try with my 5x powermate net time? I'd pay to watch

So fella's when is the nationwide tour and when are you coming my way?

It was certainly different way of imaging Saturn. :lol: totally MAD !
The planet crossed the field of view of the toucam in about 2 and a half seconds, so we had great fun just getting any kind of focus.
I don't know how we got anything with it crossing the field of view so fast which could have caused smearing of the image, we were using a 2x barlow with the toucam. The image through the eyepiece was far better then anything we captured with the toucam. I have never seen Saturn so sharply.!

Frank, The single frame you put up there is actually better then the processed image.
INFACT, that single frame is better then most processed images I get through the 12" !!! Can you imagine what registax would do with 2000 frames like that!

BTW, thanks Mikkel for holding the red light for me, without it I couldn't see the focuser so couldn't put the toucam back in as fast as I needed to.

I have to say, I'm reconsidering the Argo Navis system for tracking, I'll probabily get it someday

Frank, The single frame you put up there is actually better then the processed image.
INFACT, that single frame is better then most processed images I get through the 12" !!! Can you imagine what registax would do with 2000
frames like that!

:shock: I don't want to start thinking about it!

BTW, thanks Mikkel for holding the red light for me, without it I couldn't see the focuser so couldn't put the toucam back in as fast as I needed to.

Well there you go, I was so focused on the laptop I did'nt even see Mikkel holding the light! Cheers Mikkel!