Contains:  Solar system body or event
Saturn, August 16 at 35 degrees, psychwolf

Saturn, August 16 at 35 degrees

Equipment

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Description

At around 2:30am  I went to A-Scope at the Milwaukee Astronomical Society to do some imaging of Saturn while it was above 30 degrees, which is close to as high as it is going to get despite being the best month to image it. The scope I use is named after Luverne Armfield, and is a 12.5 inch, f/8.8, Newtonian reflector.  It is usually referred to as the "A" Scope

 For Saturn and Jupiter I like to use a one shot color camera, a ZWO ASI 462MC planetary camera, which is essentially a regular camera sensor like what is in your DSLR with a Bayer Matrix, ut capable of shooting at very high speeds. I put one filter on it, to reduce IR sensitivity which risks overwhelming the sensor. Sometimes early in the AM I don't bother to change the gain setting slider too much from when I last saved a preset and took an image. However, since Saturn is at a special time of the year for imaging, I wanted to challenge my presets so I did an experiment this time, and instead of using high gain settings like when I shoot Jupiter, I increased my exposure time for Saturn instead and lowered the gain to 246. I'm glad I did. I then used two different sharpening routines on my image, so I want to share with you one of those versions, which still could use better processing in the rings but I may h ave reached the peak of what I can do with it by now.

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Saturn, August 16 at 35 degrees, psychwolf

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Milwaukee Astronomical Society