Jupiter is out of season and I've never imaged Saturn before, so I figured I'd give it a go for the first time last night. Got my telescope and trusty webcam out and set up shop in the front yard (got a few "wtf telescope" comments by a drunk mob walking past). After 90 minutes of fighting clouds, streetlight glare and focusing problems, I finally got just under 5 minutes of great footage.

Here's a short movie of Saturn (currently side-on) at a focal length of about 5000mm:



Here's a single frame from the movie:

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/463907084_3UXkY-X3.jpg

Not so great huh? Pretty crap quality and we can't see any detail. That's ok. Thanks to some clever image processing techniques people have thought up, we can really clean things up.

Here is the same frame split into its Red/Green/Blue channels:

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/463907153_VLYJ4-X3.jpg

What a mess! Out of the 2600+ frames, what if we carefully align and stack a couple of hundred of the best ones?

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/463907062_zoNXn-X3.jpg

Getting better. Now we can process the channels further using some fairly effective algorithms (Wavelet processing, LR Deconvolution) to unblur and bring out some more detail:

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/463907073_baniQ-X3.jpg

With the channels processed, we can combine them back into an RGB image. Alternatively since the Blue channel is messy, we can discard it completely and just make an RG composite. I think I prefer that option since there's no useless junk (noisy Blue channel) in the image.

Below is the unprocessed frame, final RGB and final RG composite shots:

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/463907120_oNaKR-X3.jpg

Thanks for reading.

nice, wtf ion cannon charging?

That's f***ing awesome parabol. More!

Parabol is a l33t astrohaxor.

wow the rings are really edge on atm! which is a pity coz it makes for a nicer looking image when they are more skewed to the ecliptic. (imo) nice work parabol :D

I can find better pics using google

Nice work there parabol.

Have you managed to take pics of any satellites or are they too small or zipping along too quickly for your telescope?

Haha boba you dick

Have you managed to take pics of any satellites

Looking to do the ISS next. Unfortunately four things have to occur simultaneously:

1. Flyover above Brisbane (not that frequent, next is Feb 7th)
2. Also at a decent time (~7pm instead of 5am so that I'm awake)
3. Also at a decent part of the sky that I can see from my backyard (next pass is too low)
4. No cloud at the time. It's currently cloudy 6 out of 7 nights.

So yeah it's a pretty boring time to have a telescope given the insane amounts of cloud lately :/

holy crap parabol... thanks for the awsome post.

was awsome how you broke down the images and showed how you clear them up etc step by step. great movie too.


last edited by Scorp at 10:36:48 30/Jan/09

Hah that's cool!

got a few "wtf telescope" comments by a drunk mob walking past

That made me smile. I can picture the mob, I've probably been in the mob at one stage or another..

nice pics

and a good edit scorp, for your own sake

any pics of uranus?

that was pretty awesome though

Parabol,

Awesome stuff - what type of telescope is that on?

what type of telescope is that on?

Newtonian with a 200mm (8") wide primary mirror. Here's a pic from an earlier thread: link.

Was thinking of going a 12" scope for extra detail and light (which would allow reduced shutter speeds and hence less blurring) but can't really justify spending $1K+ like that right now. Silly AU/USD.

im looking at getting a scope. dunno where my old one is. if you had to chose, would u go better focal length or appeture? i know the diff when it comes to photography, but seeing how stars arent moving that fast, why go bigger app? brighter?

http://www.saxon.com.au/model/15075eq.html or http://www.saxon.com.au/model/1501eq.html

last edited by mooby at 15:23:34 30/Jan/09

if you had to chose, would u go better focal length or appeture?

It's a little hard to say. Depends what you want to use the scope for.

Larger aperture means more photons collected in general, and also higher detail/contrast. You'll want that for planetary imaging, both for viewing and also for astrophotography .. or else the planet will be too dim at a high magnification - making it hard to see with the naked eye and requiring longer exposure when imaging (causing massive atmospheric blurring).

For stars, nebulae, etc you'd want a shorter focal length to fit everything into view. I can't fit some of the objects in my FOV on my 1200mm FL scope, so I'd need to buy a dedicated scope (probably an 80mm refractor with 600mm FL) just for the widefield stuff. Can get away with a smaller aperture by long-exposure shots with a DSLR and a decent equatorial mount.

How much are you looking at paying for the scope? And what about scope+mount?

last edited by parabol at 15:51:26 30/Jan/09

get away with a smaller aperture by long-exposure shots with a DSLR

...with noise. not sure home much i want to spend, under a $1k. 150mm prob.
good article... http://www.stark-labs.com/blog/files/FratioAperture.php

last edited by mooby at 16:04:27 30/Jan/09

...with noise.

Noise is something you'll be dealing with anyway since you require long exposures if you're imaging nebulae, etc. We're talking usually a minimum of 30 secs up to about 5 mins of average.

Just for example, going from 80mm to 120mm in terms of refractors is like $1300 vs $3000, but does the reduced amount of required exposure (say 5mins vs 2m15s) really justify paying that much more? Chances are having a less noisy camera may help you more.

It's a delicate balance of wallet vs specs :)

(good link btw)

last edited by parabol at 16:27:34 30/Jan/09

How much did you pay for that parabol?