Gallery XXIV
The following images of Saturn were obtained with a Phillips "ToUcam" outfitted with an adaptor from AVA which replaces the web cam lens with a 1.25" telescope focuser adaptor. The program K3CCD was used to control the web cam and aquire images as an AVI file at 5 frames a second. These were later processed with Registax 2. Some AVI's were first sorted for quality and bad frames dropped prior to processing in Registax with the program called HandyAVI. These were shot with a (30 year old?) C14 at prime focus (smaller ones) or thru a Meade 2x "shorty" barlow (bigger ones). This scope sits on a Losmondy "Titan" mount and is operated with a "Gemini" controller. It is the instrument in the Cable County BOE's own "Donald C. Martin Observatory". The diagonal was removed prior to imaging so these are shot "straight thru".
The seeing was not to good so I only shot one "good" AVI run of a minute in length or about 598 frames. These were obtained with a Meade 2x "shorty" barlow. I set the image control to image at 1/25 sec exposure. The "Brightness" meter in K3CCD showed a little blue at the top but was mostly yellow.
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The raw AVI was trimmed from 598 frames to 198 frames with HandyAVI using a setting of 25. The images were "averaged" with Registax 2 using a quality setting of 90%. I don't know how many frames it used to make the image. I did not play with the wavelets. |
The raw AVI consisted of 598 frames which were "averaged" with Registax 2 using a quality setting of 90%. I don't know how many frames it used to make the image. I did not play with the wavelets. |
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Same 598 frames reprocessed with REGISTAX 2 at a quality setting of 90%, no wavlets, |
Same image as at left but after wavelets were applied. This brought out the bands and sharpened things up. |
Dismayed by the seeing, I removed the Barlow and went to prime focus. To produce these images I used HandyAVI's "crop and save" feature to cut out some of the black space around the planet. The resulting AVIs were either processed with Registax 2 or were again loaded into HandyAVI to sort by quality and discard the "bad" frames. The idea of this is to get remove "bad" frames to speed up the processing of the AVI by Registax. These files were small and did process fast.
![]() 128 frames were selected after cropping and quality sorting in HandyAVI. These were then processed in the original version of Registax. No wavelets |
![]() Same data but AVI was processed with Registax 2 |
![]() 100 frames were selected after cropping and quality sorting in HandyAVI. These were then processed with Registax 2. No wavelets |
![]() same as at left but with wavelets applied, this brings out the rings on the planet |
![]() same as above but different wavelets |
![]() 98 frames were selected after cropping and quality sorting in HandyAVI. These were then processed with Registax 2. No wavelets
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Conditions were cold 18-20 degrees f. The full moon was near Saturn.
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