Saturn 2012

Not quite 2012, an image from early 2011 this, taken with a Skywatcher 127 Mak and an SPC880 webcam. Must be one from my early days of imaging because these days I usually try to get Saturn’s rings more horizontal. Unfortunately I can’t find the original files at the moment so I don’t know what the capture settings were.

And this one using the same kit captured on 6th March 2012, my first opportunity of the 2012 apparition of Saturn. The planet was still less than 30 degrees above the horizon when this was taken, so I look forward to better opportunities in the coming months.

Capture details for this are:


Frame Rate (fps)=10.00
Colour Space / Compression=I420
Exposure=-4
Brightness=97
Contrast=32
Saturation=0
Gamma=0
ColorEnable=255
BacklightCompensation=0
Gain=48

and I stacked 1800 out of 3600 frames. If anything, I think the gain needs to be lower as there’s a bit of noise in the background.

This next one is also with the same kit, stacking about 1600 frames from 3600. It was taking on the evening of 12/03/2012 in pretty good seeing although the dew was running off the scope and making imaging pretty tough. There’s a fair bit I’m not happy with as a result, but I think it’s possibly the best-focused image of Saturn I’ve taken so far.

SharpCap settings were


[Philips SPC 900NC PC Camera]
Frame Divisor=1
Resolution=640x480
Frame Rate (fps)=10.00
Colour Space / Compression=I420
Exposure=-4
Brightness=63
Contrast=32
Saturation=0
Gamma=0
ColorEnable=255
BacklightCompensation=0
Gain=55

Gain definitely needs to be a bit lower I think, but I’d wound it up to try to combat the dew on the corrector lens.

This is a better capture I think, but I’ve drawn out too much yellow either in the processing or as a result of bumping up the saturation. Need to go back and give it
another try:

Desaturating the image to remove the distraction of the colour leave something that looks pretty good for a webcam and a 127 Mak, I reckon:

SharpCap settings for this one were:


[Philips SPC 900NC PC Camera]
Frame Divisor=1
Resolution=640x480
Frame Rate (fps)=10.00
Colour Space / Compression=YUY2
Exposure=-4
Brightness=64
Contrast=32
Saturation=40
Gamma=0
ColorEnable=255
BacklightCompensation=0
Gain=45

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