northcoast42 Loc: Puget Sound, Washington

Saturn reached opposition this summer and has been steadily moving away for awhile now but still close enough for some decent attempts. It's pretty low in the sky from my position in the Pacific northwest (Puget Sound, Washington) and to tell you the truth, I was pleasantly surprised at how well this came out. One other note....the smoke arrived last week and it hasn't left. For a time, the news was saying we had the worst air quality in the country. Hard to believe with the raging fires going in California. Hoping for clear skies again soon.

I used a Meade 12" LX850 with a 4x Powermate image amplifier attached to an ADC (atmospheric dispersion corrector) attached to an RGB filter wheel attached to a Skyris236M monochrome video camera.

The process begins with capturing 3 separate video sequences of (in this case) about 5000 frames each. One sequence is done through a red filter, one through the green filter and one through the blue filter. I take each sequence into a program called Pipp to crop and center the planet so the next program (Autostakkert3) will have a stable target to align and stack. In a 5000 frame stack I'll end up actually stacking around 2000-3000 frames depending on the quality of the sequence. From each sequence I end up with a single image so 3 sequences gives me three frames, one from the red filter, one from the green and one from the blue. I take each frame into Registax wavelet processing for sharpening and detail enhancement. From there I take all three images into photoshop for integration into the full color (RGB) image you see here.

J-SPEIGHT Loc: Akron, Ohio

Excellent shot John

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

Beauty!

Sidwalkastronomy Loc: New Jersey Shore

As someone who has done some astrophotography nice capture. I always love showing someone Saturn through a telescope and seeing their reaction to this magnificent planet

Ballard Loc: Grass Valley, California

Yes nice shot. Thanks for the description of the process.

OneShot1 Loc: Wichita, KS, USA

Very cool. Thanks for process info. Lotta work!

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

A lot of work but the result is very nice and well worth the effort!

bwa

northcoast42 Loc: Puget Sound, Washington

I also like showing people this planet and Jupiter as well. With Saturn, the rings always capture their imagination and fascination. With Jupiter, the 4 bright Galilean moons tend to captivate.

northcoast42 Loc: Puget Sound, Washington

Thanks. I don't really think of it as work, it's just fun. The processing is almost as much fun as the capture. I never really know how good (or bad) the final image will be until I'm done.

northcoast42 Loc: Puget Sound, Washington

Thanks. This is one of my better images of Saturn. The last time I did planets was two years ago. Saturn was a just a bit lower (declination -22deg in 2018 vs -21deg this year) to the horizon then. I'm looking forward to 2023. Saturn will be about 10 degrees higher (-11 deg) and Jupiter will be nearly 40 degrees higher. The imaging should be (hopefully) much improved.

Sidwalkastronomy Loc: New Jersey Shore

I love the 4 moons dancing around Jupiter and if lucky enough to see a moon passing in front and seeing the shadow