Saturn 2022 aug 12-13-14
This is from Friday morning of Saturn nearing opposition. Close enough to not even matter!
This is the best image of approx 34 runs that morning. It was at 07:33 UTC-4=03:33 EDT
taken with firecapture, stacked with Autostakkert! v3, wavelets in Registax v6, annotated with Imagemagick in Linux
It was taken past its highest altitude, down from maybe 30 degrees to 23 degrees in this image. more airmass to see through!
Atmospheric dispersion can be seen with blue on the top and red on the bottom of various features (like the rings). Perhaps a ZWO ADC would help!
Only a mere $128USD… pretty reasonable compared to almost *every* single other piece of astro kit!
seeing was poor, transparency was poor, the near full moon was very close within 4 or 5 degrees.
Still the best saturn image I have ever taken! Letsee what Saturday and Sunday night runs look like!
This is from the next night, Friday night/Saturday morning at 05:15 UTC-5=01:15 EDT
I had stayed up Friday evening and imaged Saturn as it came up out of the horizon … and they were all terrible.
Took a short nap, and got up again early on Saturday morning and did a few more runs before the clouds came and shut me down.
Again, seeing was poor, transparency was poor and the full moon was still within 20 degrees.
Exposure time was average, between 40 and 50ms. Colour contrast on the cloud bands not quite as good as 20220812.
taken with firecapture, stacked with Autostakkert! v3, wavelets in Registax v6, annotated with Imagemagick in Linux
The last of a 3 nights/mornings in a row.. the longest stretch of astronomy I have done in a long time!
So much so that I am unsure of day or night, orange juice or screwdriver? I only know that tomorrow is the “W” day and I must get to sleep real soon now.
Last night/this morning.. Saturday evening stayed outside with Kim doing some visual observing. at 22:00 went inside to watch The Game… CFL Sask at Edmonton. At half time they went into a delay due to thunder and lightning near the stadium. The game resumed and ended around 01:30, at which point I went outside and started some Saturn imaging runs. I was dead on my feet my this time. Not nearly enough nap time in the last two days to make up for the lack of sleep.
I noticed that I was falling asleep at the same time as some clouds were coming in, so I pulled the plug after an hour, or 15 runs.
The moon was much further away, the skies a little clearer. Seeing was maybe average, transparency maybe average.
The Rings look great and I can almost see a second division next to the Cassini division. Don’t know yet if that is a processing artefact or real.
The cloud banding was more pronounced as well… ok.. this is one of the best Saturn images of my imaging career