From: Alan Friedman <alan@greatarrow.com>
Date: April 21, 2005 1:51:52 PM MDT
To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] saturn with five moons
Hi Milton -
Thanks for the kind words. I have taken to doing final processing of my images on an LCD monitor at home instead of on my laptop (gives me more control over subtle stuff that I miss on the dim laptop screen). When I looked at the final image on the laptop I couldn't find Mimas either! Actually I did not notice it in the video stream either until I stacked the frames and processed the result. Enceladus is pretty easy in my 10" visually on transparent nights - I have yet to see Mimas at the eyepiece. It was mag 12.9 that night.
S&T is a tough nut to crack. I usually send a copy but have had only one lunar image published a couple of years back. I think my saturn shots need to have an aurora in the field also to qualify. 8^)
best -
Alan
On Apr 21, 2005, at 3:37 PM, Milton Aupperle wrote:
Hi Alan;
Absolutely stunning. I couldn't see the 5th moon until I inverted the
image, but it was, just to the left of the rightmost moon and about a
rings thickness from the leftmost side of the ring. Really really
gorgeous and thank you for sharing it with us.
Have you submitted this to Sky & Telescope yet?? If not please do as
that is a phenomenal shot and should be shared with the amateurs all
over the world.
Interesting how the Red channel is giving you so much more detail and
turbulence stability too. With the Color cameras, you can explicitly
view the red channel in Astro IIDC, so it might be interesting to see
how that works out, as it should have a similar effect as using a red
filter.
On a side note, yesterday my order from Kendricks arrived (after an 8
week wait on the Orion rings) and I "flocked" my Orion MAK scope
(tube, secondary mirror baffle and main baffle) last night. All I can
say is WOW - what a difference. Before that I'd never seen the airy
disk with the scope for bright stars and the glare from Jupiter's
bright equatorial bands would basically wipe out any detail in the
bands. Just viewing the sky last night was different as the background
was black and stars showed up much more distinctly, so I'm fairly sure
I was getting pretty atrocious light scatter.
If I get steady skies, I hope to tweak the collimation a little bit to
see if I can improve it a bit as it looks to be a bit out.
TTYL..
Milton J. Aupperle
President
ASC - Aupperle Services and Contracting
Mac Software (Drivers, Components and Application) Specialist
#1005 - 815 14th Avenue. S.W.
Calgary Alberta Canada T2R0N5
1-(403)-229-9456
milton@outcastsoft.com
www.outcastsoft.com
On 21-Apr-05, at 12:55 PM, Alan Friedman wrote:
>
> Hi all -
>
> What a difference three weeks (and 37 million miles) makes! Saturn is
> withdrawing quickly into the western sky and getting hard to capture
> with clarity.
>
> http://www.geocities.com/alanfgag/saturn_41805final.jpg
>
> (also posted in the planetary folder in the group files area)
>
> This was my first chance to try out a new manual RGB filter wheel with
> my DMK21BF04 webcam and Astro IIDC beta 2.00.15. The detail (luminance)
> was captured through the red filter. It is amazing what a difference
> this made in average
> seeing (5-6/10) even though the exposures were 10 times longer (266ms).
> The white
> light images were unusable due to constant atmospheric morphing of the
> planet's shape.
>
> At the end of this session I took a stream using a half second shutter
> speed which captured a nice grouping of five moons (down to Mimas at
> mag.12.9) clustered very close to saturn. This was combined with the
> other data and processed in Photoshop.
>
> 10" f14.6 A/P mak/cassegrain with A/P 2x Barlow and SBIG RGB filters
> for RGB, SBIG R filter for luminance.
>
> Hope you enjoy it!
>
> cheers-
> Alan
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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