First attempt at Saturn

Hi all, this is my first attempt with the DSI. It's pretty cr*p, so can anyone help me improve? setting up the LX90 = 10 mins. Finding saturn = 5 mins. Focusing = 3 hrs. Trying to open the picture = 1 hr, the laptop refused to open it. transfering it to PC 10 mins, DSI processor refused to open it on the PC as well and I had to open it in MS viewer. Would the picture have been sharper with more detail if the moon hadn't been so close to it? If not then where am I going wrong? It took hours to get this and it's very dissapointing, but maybe I'm expecting too much!

www.irishastronomy.org/user_resources/fi...06450577-saturn2.jpg

Any advice would be gratefully recieved.
Thanks,
Bill H.

Bill,
Dont be so disheartened, getting good image takes a fair amount of experiance and patience and alot of trial and error at first.
Its not as bad an image as you think, the main issue with it is that its over exposed, next time try and reduce the brightness as you're taking the image.
The focus is slightly out also, but you can see that the outer rings are slightly darker then the inner rings, as they should be.

I dont have the DSI, I use the philips toucam pro, so I cant say anything specifiec about the DSI, but isnt this a deep sky camera, for faint objects.

The moon should have no effect on planets, faint objects yes, but not this.
If you're using a laptop screen, be aware that the brightness can look perfect on it and as soon as you run it on your desktop (CRT) monitor, the image can look alot worse.
The image size is about right, you'll need to use a barlow to make it bigger.

Next time do the same again, just reduce the image brightness, and you'll be most of the way there.

Many thanks for your encouraging feedback Dave. I will have to play around a lot. I couldn't find where to adjust the exposure, I could only find auto-exposure, but it must be there some where.
This is my attempt at Jupiter at 4 am this morning. I really don't know what went wrong here :evil: On the laptop, I had jupiter and 4 moons, they were all lined up in a near perfect line, they looked stunning in the 10mm eyepiece and looked pretty good on the laptop screen, but this is what came out. About one frame from completion, the view suddenly changed to this, I can only assume that being out tere for six hours through that bitter frost, that it got too much for the laptop. I would appreciate anyone or everyones feedback on this.

www.irishastronomy.org/user_resources/fi...6485119-jupiter1.jpg

Bill H.

Bill,
Gosh, you got me there ?????
Try having a go at reprocessing the image, maybe there is some strange setting in the DSI software, maybe a combo of too much unsharp mask, nagitive and some other settings ????

That looks like one of the old speed limit signs off to meet its maker.

Seriously though, I would think that the cold did get to your laptop. I had my old (233 P2) laptop out last night and even though it was pluged in to the mains all the time (over 2 hours), the battery never showed more than 25% charged. Were you working off of the battery or mains?

I did get some images of Satrurn and the Moon but nothing exceptional.



When aquiring the image of Saturn the image on the screen was very faint. Even then the stacking brightened the sky to a blue and over exposed the planet. This was adjusted with the Gamma and Brightness. The image is very niosy and needs more frames, I think?
And the Moon



Michael Scully, KAC

Yes, I was working off the mains because my battery is so old it won't hold charge for longer than half an hour.
I tried reprocessing, but I think there must be a fault with the installation of the software, each time I try to open the picture in the DSI imaging processor it closes down. I may have to try some more updates or reinstall.
Bill H.