From: Alan Friedman <alan@greatarrow.com>

Date: February 19, 2008 1:11:13 PM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Mediocre Saturn


Hi Milton -


Thanks for posting - the color variation between north and south on saturn is quite amazing and nicely captured in your images. Saturn is perhaps the target most demanding of good seeing. I've observed it a few times this winter - but have not encountered steady enough skies to fire up the camera... hopefully that will change as the air warms up.


best,

Alan



On Feb 19, 2008, at 1:29 PM, Milton Aupperle wrote:

Hi Folks;

I had mediocre seeing on the 16th and shot a few images of Saturn.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Astro_IIDC/files/Planetary/Saturn_20080216_MJA.jpg

The images were taken with the C8 at prime focus (2,000 mm focal
length), seeing wasn't good enough to go any longer. With the Flea's
bigger pixels (7.5 microns) I could shoot at 30 fps with low gains,
whereas with the Flea 2 (4.56 micron pixels), I had to use 15 fps and
moderately high gains to get the same brightness.

With Saturn's north pole tilted more towards us, I was surprised to
see how much more bluish / greenish / darker it is in the north
hemisphere than to the south hemisphere. That's why I did several
saturation versions of the same images.

TTYL..

Milton Aupperle