Imaging Saturn

So, I exported an image sequence from some video I grabbed of Jupiter early in the evening yesterday. Randomly opened five in pshop and manually stacked. Here’s my first stacked image of Jupiter.

5 frame manual stack.

Right on.

I set up in the THO. I had to align twice because something was loose. I shot Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn with my dSLR, and then I stuck my planetary camera on the scope. Last year I totally failed at using this camera. This year, I stuck it on, couldn’t find focus, re-centred the planet in my telrad, and found the focus. Just like that. Then Bill told me to stick it on the 14″ in the GBO, so I did. I exported an image sequence from my .mov file and then Bill did a quick Registax stack before I tweaked it a bit in Photoshop. So there. Maybe I will do a manual stack of Jupiter – it is really great these days. Tonight I will test some wide field of the Milky Way using my iOptron sky tracker, and maybe, just maybe, look at the Spring chapter of Turn Left at Orion again.

Saturn at opposition, June 3, 2016, with C14 at the CAO.

So – Thursday night skies were not fabulous but good enough for ‘practice’, as Blake said, luring me from the kitchen and my hot chocolate back to the observatory. I can’t get an image on my Orion Solar System IV Camera – I have been able to in the past (with some focus and centering difficulty, and my old macbook pro), but not with my new mbp nor my new pc laptop.

After much frustration, Blake helped: pointed to Vega, adjusted focus while he fiddled with the very poorly designed image resolving software provided by Orion, and can you imagine: whenever I moved more closely in to focus, the star disappeared! Black screen. Nudge the focus just a touch, and it reappeared. Something is weird. And it is not just me. So…next time (maybe tonight, though it will be busy here this eve) I will try the ms Amcap software, see if I fare better with it. I may need to invest on a better astro cam, because I am totally failing at Saturn image capture this year.

I am also still struggling with finding the right mov>avi conversion software. Winff does not produce viewable/usable files.

Yesterday, Friday, it was grey and blustery – I think Blake said the winds reached 60km/h, gale force. It was pretty lovely out, and the air was so soft, since we were sitting in clouds basically.

Dietmar gave a Photo 101 workshop, which was awesome, and graciously allowed me to do my favourite camera meter black-white-grey demo. As you can see in the image below, if you let the camera ‘balance’ the exposure at EV 0 (zero), it will offer an average metering that aims to make everything look middle grey. From left to right, that is a white wall, a grey shirt, and a dark navy jacket – and all look identically middle grey as per a ‘balanced’ meter reading. On the far right, you can see that by exposing the dark subject 2.5 stops ‘under’, you can actually get an accurate rendering of tonal value. See Ansel Adams. As per the Zone System, white will be around 3 stops ‘over’ EV zero to have details, and black around 3.5 to 4 stops. So..unless you want everything to look grey: learn how to control exposure!!

What a camera meter sees.

Enough lecturing. The evening was sweet and the white lights were on, so this:

Today, Andrew Wright and his family are joining us and I am so excited to welcome them! The skies look promising and Blake has giant bubbles. Happy weekend.

It is really great to be back in Ontario for the summer, and to enjoy my first weekend back at the CAO. Ian and I walked the Margaret Paul Trail, and under the supervision of Blake, Elaine, and Tony, I set up for a night of imaging in the Tony Horvatin Observatory. It’s not in the melee of the gang, but protected from the wind and a really great place to do some imaging with computers without disturbing everyone with the extra light.

I thought I might capture some Saturn Friday night with my planetary camera and the club SkyNyx, which I borrowed – but I totally failed at getting an image on screen. Getting the focus is a real production, if the planet is not dead-centrered, but I think the real problem was being patient in adjusting gain and exposure levels. I did some daytime testing yesterday and was able to quite easily get some alien trees in the distance, though I have to follow up with Blake’s suggestion for capture with the SkyNyx.

In the meantime, having done the Summer chapter of Turn Left at Orion last year I thought I might try the Spring chapter (though, admittedly, on June 20th, late spring.) Blake printed up for me an observing list based on best times and off I went. The first several objects had already set or were behind the house, and eventually I stopped shooting the stars (variables and doubles) for boredom and went straight for the galaxies.

I think I got three nice shots, of Bodes M81, The Black Eye M64, and the Whirlpool Galaxy M51. I used Deep Sky Stacker on my pc laptop, then Photoshop on my mac, and with some basic processing lessons from Steve and Dietmar I did okay, I think. Considering I don’t use PEC or a guide scope – on this note, Ian showed me a new way to balance RA and DEC so that the worm gears are working against the gravity in both directions and I can see a clear difference.

Bodes is 90s, stack of 3 plus 1 dark
Whirlpool is 45s, stack of 4 plus 1 dark.
Black Eye is 45s, stack of 5, plus 1 dark.

We got clouded out for the rest of the weekend so I have packed up and will drive home soon and then have a lovely evening of Scrabble with some friends. The next couple of weeks will be focused on image preparation for my Modeling Views show, and continuing work on the Flappy Rings. Nice way to spend a summer at work and leisure.

Bodes M81

Black Eye Nebula M64

Whirlpool Galaxy M51