Hi all

Although my body was aching from my first sparring class in over 4 weeks at Karate the night before, I was still determined to get up at 2am to image Saturn on the morning of the 14th January. The very hot days we’ve had and the High Pressure system sitting over the NSW East Coast is usually a good sign that the seeing is going to be quite good.

It didn’t disappoint, and I was able to capture Saturn from between 2:30am to 4:30am in quite reasonable seeing – definitely my best for this apparition.

Saturn - 14th January

Continue reading for more information.

I captured 7 runs over the 2 hour session – 3 at 7.5 frames per second (fps) and 4 at 15fps. At 15fps, the histogram was only half full in the red and green channels and even less in blue, but the faster frame rate definitely helped freeze the seeing more and provided better final images.

After processing the 4 individual runs, I blinked between them looking for atmospheric detail such as storms but none were visible. So I combined all of the data from the 4 runs and processed it into a single image, which is the one you see above.

Captured with my 12″ Newt on the EQ6, using the DMK21AU04 and 5x powermate. 15fps, max Gain (1023), Gamma 121. Recorded for about 2 minutes in each channel. 900 frames stacked in each channel (out of about 7000 captured in total, across 4 runs).

This image is an improvement over my one from a week previous so it’s heading in the right direction.

Thanks for looking.

No related posts.

posted in Astrophotography | 1 Comment