Help with Saturn Image

I'm hoping someone can offer me advice on what I'm doing wrong. I've been fairly successful with Mars last year, and I took some good images of Saturn in October and November, but I must be doing something different/wrong now.

I'm using a ToUCam and Registax 2 with my NexStar 5i. The processed image of Saturn looks like it didn't stack correctly. I tended to overexpose my images of Mars, so I was making a deliberate attempt to keep the exposure down on Saturn, but am I going too faint? Maybe the individual frames are too faint for Registax to reliably line them up?

I was trying to keep the exposure gain as low as possible because other images I've done show a lot of noise if I have it high. But maybe I need the higher gain and compensate for the noise with lots of frames?

Thanks,
-Joe

Attached Image:

Hi Joe -

It looks like you might be stacking frames with too much turbulance showing in them, causing the smears in the image. Maybe try selecting only the frames where the atmosphere is the most steady, and only stacking those frames. My experience is that only 40 clear frames will give you a better image than 400 not so clear ones.

As for the gain, I wouldn't put it any higher - it looks like your final image is plenty bright enough. Upping the gain will only destroy details in your image. The ultimate goal is to use the clearest raw frames possible.

Hope that helps,

-Jake