Saturn: Opposition 2006 - 2007

As planets go, Saturn is breath taking, especially to see it with your own eyes through a telescope. Here are a few of my images taken through my telescope using a webcam. This proved to be a frustrating year to image Saturn. although the planet was high in the sky, we were plagued with clouds for most of the apparition. There were a few highlights, especially the close encounters with the moon. I did also get a few very pleasing images. So, though I got few images, many of the ones I got I was very happy with. Also note how the rings have closed up much more this year from the previous years.

22nd January 2007 (Right)

Poor seeing and low sky transparency meant I had to image at F20. This made for a smaller image that I would have liked. Overall, best of the season to date. This doesn't say much because conditions have been poor and clear skies a rarity so far this winter.

26th January 2007 (Left)

Similar conditions to those on the 22nd of Jan. Not been a good season to date. Hopefully things will improve.

2nd February 2007

A little improvement in the conditions tonight over what I have seen so far. However I didn't have long to image before the clouds rolled in but overall I'm pleased with these images.
The RGB image was taken with a ToUcam 740 and the IR filtered image with a Vesta 675 with a monocrome ICX098BL CCD fitted.
The IR image is clearly sharper and shows the inner C-ring nicely.
The final (bottom) image is a combination of the two above it. I combined them using Serif PhotoPlus10. The Luminance layer is the better 685nm+ image from the monochrome camera. The RGB was aligned over the top and added as a colour layer.

Saturn - Moon Conjuction - 2nd February 2007

Another feature of the night of the 2nd of February was the close encounter of the Moon with Saturn. This was way too far appart to image with the webcam, which has a very small field of view. The image below was captured by holding a digital camera to a 26mm eyepiece on my 222mm F8 Newtonian telescope.
It is a composite of two images and very little other processing. The first to get a good exposure of Saturn, the second to get a reasonable exposure of the moon which is much brighter than the planet. Roll over the image with your mouse to see the original.

Image taken using a Sony Cybershot DSC-P73 digital camera (3x zoom), hand held to a 26mm eyepiece.

6th February 2007

One of the few good nights available to me for imaging Saturn this apparition.

As usual I used my 222mm F8 Newtonian telescope, in combination with a 2x Barlow extended by 75mm. This gives me an effective focal ratio of about F30, about 6.6 metres focal length.
The image of Saturn projected onto the webcam sensor is tiny, even at this focal length, just a few millimetres across. Fortunately webcams have tiny sensors, which is what makes them perfect for planetary imaging.

Three images were taken...
The first image was taken with a standard colour ToUcam 840. Approx 4500 frames from two videos were processed and about 3000 were stacked using Registax 4. A Baader UV-IR block filter was also used for this image.
The second image was taken using a modified Philips Vesta 675 webcam, with a monocrome CCD. The camera was fitted with a near Infra-red pass filter (685nm+). Again this is 4500 frames processed and approximately 3000 stacked.
The details for the third image are the same as for the second except the image uses a deep IR filter, only passing IR from 742nm and longer wavelength. The webcam is sensitive to about 1000nm.

The left hand column shows the images slightly enlarged (120%) and processed differently to give a more "natural look". The left hand column doesn't show the 742nm+ image as the noise in the image was greater than the other two due to the smaller number of photons hitting the sensor on the filtered image. The Right hand column is processed harder to try to bring out more detail
Notice how the inner C (or Crepe) ring is much brighter in the 685nm+ image when compared to the RGB and the deeper IR 742nm+ images.

March 2007

I took me a long time to put my Saturn images onto my website this year. So as a result, I've collected tham together into a single image for March.

The conditions were never great all month. These are selection of my best efforts.

The moon image was done at Newtonian focus (no barlow) at the slowest shutter speed and 100% gain using the monochrome RAW modded webcam.
This revealed 6 of Saturns moons.

Note the paterning on the monochrome image from 14th March. I think this camera is starting to cause problems. Before processing this patterning is pretty bad. I have to blur the image significantly to get rid of it.

25th March 2007

Again the conditions were far from Ideal. Even the IR image isn't great. Again it is also suffering from excessive bluring to get rid of the patterning from the camera.