Saturn 2021 July 30
This is one of a few imaging runs of Saturn taken Friday evening. The new mount is still not polar aligned, so there was more drift than I was happy with. This is the first time the x2 antares barlow was used. Focus is still quite soft (I still do not have a full length extension on the electric focus controller) and that will get better.
Again, the camera would not come to focus with the x2 barlow, but it did with the 90 deg diagonal. So I am still all confused up as to orientation, flipx flipy choices. I had to go into stellarium to see what Saturn should look like and edit it after the fact.
This was a 240 second run with 60ms exposures. The best 25% of 3970 frames were used. I love the scale of 3600mm focal length… Saturn is actually larger than a pinprick!
So, altitude was still very low and Saturn was still in the Kingston SkyDome… so this again is a benchmark image, where future ones can only get better 🙂
Also attached is an image from Allsky1pi (with its new wider angle lens) camera system actually showing Saturn at the same time as the telescopic image was taken, approx 22:53 EDT Friday evening. Saturn is 19deg altitude and is located centrally in the Kingston SkyDome. If I had better prepared with a nap, I could have gotten up around 02:00 or 03:00 when it would have cleared the light pollution.
