Saturn Jan 3rd

Here is my second attempt at Saturn and a definate improvement over my post a week or so ago.

We had good conditions last night, seeing 7/10 but with some intermitent low cloud.

Six inch F8 Dobsonian, 32 mm Plossl in combination with 2 x Barlow and extension tube to increase it to 3.25x. Hand held afocal Sony handycam at about 7 x opical zoom, 1/25 sec. Best 276/700 frames processed in registax and Gimp.

Any comments for improvement most welcome

Thanks for looking

Mike Ashburn (Kawerau, New Zealand)

Attached Image:

Nice shot Mike!
Keep up the good work, and Happy New Year!


Ivan

Mike,

That image seems to show the red-blue shift in the A ring that was described the January 2003 Sky and Telescope Observer's Log. Did you notice that when you were shooting?

Jeff

Ivan, Jeff and Brian many thanks for your words of encouragement.

To answer Jeff's question on the colour shift in the A ring. No I didn't notice this visually at the eye piece but then I was not specificaly looking for it. When I process the image in registax the raw stacked image is quite yellow but with some slight colour differentiation in the A ring visible.
When I look at the 'histogram and RGB' The blue chanel plot is shifted to the left and the red chanel is shifted to the right. I then play around with the colour weights to bring the peaks in each of the RGB histograms into line. This seems to bring out the colour shift. The resultant image, apart from some unsharp masking, is the one I posted.

I have tried to induce the colour shift in the B ring by adjusting brightness , contrast and RGB weights to see if its a result of my processing and I couldn't do it.

I have seen some images on this forum show the shift and others that don't seem to show it. Next time I am observing I will look for it.

Best Wishes Mike