Introduction and first attempts

Latest attempts at Saturn. Lovely clear night

18th June 2010. Planet is getting low in teh sky now and most viewing is now in teh direction of Athlone's light haze.

Celestron G8N
Philips SPC900NC
2.5 x Barlow
Registax



Views still look more detailed with the eye through the eyepiece so I must be doing something wrong....

Peter

Another

And another

Peter

There is spectral separation in your images - this can be addressed in Registax and the Red, Green, and Blue channels can be shifted a few pixels with respect to each other.

You said Saturn was low in the sky so the source could be atmospheric refraction. That is blue gets refracted more than red and I think the refraction is in the direction of zenith. If I am recalling this correctly then one would expect a blue fringe to the north of the planetary disc and a red finge to the south. I sometimes see it my own images and haven't properly root-caused the origins so the above explanation could be wrong. However, shifting the colour planes can improve the image significantly.

What barlow to you have? Some barlows bundled with scopes can be improved on. I purchased a Televue 5X Powermate to replace my Meade 3x Barlow which came with my first scope - I now get larger images and they're sharper too. But first try shifting the colour planes. Not sure when is the best time to do wavelet processing but suspect its better after the colour-plane shift.


Mark

Hi Mark,

Great suggestion regarding the RGB shift.

(Though I only seem to have the option of R or B shift....but i'm sure the G is there somehere! I'm defeintely in learning mode with all this!)

I have done the Blue and Red shift with one of my images and appended.


I have a couple of Barlows which I bought after market (i.e. they did not come with the scope).

A Celestron 2x and a Revelation (GSO) 2.5x.

Before I even considered doing any astrophotography I saw a TeleVue 5x go for reasonable money on eBay so I'll keep my eyes peeled.

I suspect that when/if I get my collimation closer the images will also improve

Thanks for the helpful comments on this and collimation,
Peter

Just a comment on shifting the colour planes - you only need to adjust two (as moving two in an identical manner is equivalent to moving the third with respect to the two) - hence Registax only provides two.

Had me raising my eyebrow when I first started playing with it.

Mark