From: "Milton Aupperle" <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: February 21, 2008 10:10:08 AM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: Mediocre Saturn

Hi Alan;

The color difference is really distinctive between the north and south

halves. It will be interesting to see what other people come up with too.

I'm hoping tonight will be my lucky night for saturn and maybe mars,

as the forecasts indicate minimal turbulence and the jets stream is no

where near us, for about the first time since december.

TTYL..

Milton Aupperle

--- In Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com, Alan Friedman <alan@...> wrote:

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