My First Saturn

Hi all,
I tried my first image of Saturn this morning at 4:30 AM. I can see how this hobby could turn me into a sleepy-eyed dink Anyway, here is my first image. The seeing was pretty bad..... like looking through a waterfall, but I just had to try out the new scope and Toucam. I had a hard time telling if the focus was really good because of the veiwing conditions. Any body out there have some good suggestions for focusing? Comments and suggestions are always appreciated.
Thanks,
Tyler

Celestron Ultima 2000 8" SCT with TeleVue 2.5X and Toucam Pro II 840K

Attached Image:

Tyler,

My goodness, you did very well for your first time. Focus looks good to me. Just keep at it and you'll start to see what good focus is. I usually try to focus on the Cassini division for focus. Make sure you get a lot of frames with Saturn. I typically shoot for 3-4 minutes at 10fps. That's around 2000 frames. Make sure the scope is as colluminated as possible, and of course seeing is a big thing. Saturn will get better as time goes on this year.

Good luck and I look forward to more images.

Paul Maxson
http://glory.gc.maricopa.edu/~pmaxson/index.htm

Tyler, an excellent first image of Saturn!! Especially since it is still so low in the sky! Once you learn the ropes of the camera, focus, cooling the scope, and fine collimation (which does not take very long) you are then only limited by the seeing. Experiment with different camera settings and see what you get and what you like. I capture many images that are not nearly as good as yours. When you hit that moment of great seeing during a capture and process the frames, you will be amazed. Some nights I sit at the laptop for 4 or 5 hours before getting a window of good seeing. Even on a night of poor seeing I have found several minutes of excellent seeing and have gotten some decent images. If you make webcamming an evening routine your chances are better of hitting that perfect night and getting some outstanding images. Seeing is everything in webcam imaging. Keep up the good work, and good luck (th most important thing) Vince

http://members.cox.net/767/index.html

Tyler, I surely wish my "first" Saturn image was something even close to yours! (it looked more like a blob with two handles! lol!)

You certainly did a great job, and got a very good focus on it too!
Just play a bit more with your settings and give it some more practice, you are on the road to success!


Keep it up!


Ivan