Saturn near opposition, RGB filters
Posted: Thu Oct 08, 2026 12:05 pm
Captured 8th October 2026 (planet was at opposition on 7th Oct). Poor seeing with Low and High fronts battling it out above me. Good to see the rings are back.
Equipment: Celestron AVX mount, Celestron C8, Celestron R, G, B filters, manual filter wheel, JMI Motofocuser, Skyris 236M, Masuyama 1.5X Barlow.
Software: SharpCap, BiggSky, GIMP.
Capture: Sets of 2000, 3000, 5000 frames with 640x480 capture area. Centre or Lock used to hold ROI steady. Exposure for each filter adjusted to put histogram at ~75% saturation.
Processing: Stack + Denoise (100/100), Decon. Combine RGB sets (R used for alignment), create Luminance (from RGB) for LRGB. GIMP for UnSharpMask. BiggSky was only stacking ~30% of frames, I regularly see 70-90% of frames stacked - a good indicator of the conditions.
For R filter: SER, MONO8, 640x480, gain 408/480, exposure 12ms, 5000 frames @ 82 fps.
With Luminance created from RGB data.
Finished session with Altair 183M, UV/IR-cut filter, using SER, MONO8, 640x480, gain 2514/4999, exposure 23ms, 5000 frames @ 35fps.
10 years ago using a newly purchased Nexstar 6SE and 2Mp Solar System Imager I managed this image. It took me 3 nights to get the planet on the camera sensor!
Dave
Equipment: Celestron AVX mount, Celestron C8, Celestron R, G, B filters, manual filter wheel, JMI Motofocuser, Skyris 236M, Masuyama 1.5X Barlow.
Software: SharpCap, BiggSky, GIMP.
Capture: Sets of 2000, 3000, 5000 frames with 640x480 capture area. Centre or Lock used to hold ROI steady. Exposure for each filter adjusted to put histogram at ~75% saturation.
Processing: Stack + Denoise (100/100), Decon. Combine RGB sets (R used for alignment), create Luminance (from RGB) for LRGB. GIMP for UnSharpMask. BiggSky was only stacking ~30% of frames, I regularly see 70-90% of frames stacked - a good indicator of the conditions.
For R filter: SER, MONO8, 640x480, gain 408/480, exposure 12ms, 5000 frames @ 82 fps.
- RGB.png (540.67 KiB) Viewed 146 times
With Luminance created from RGB data.
- LRGB.png (581.17 KiB) Viewed 146 times
Finished session with Altair 183M, UV/IR-cut filter, using SER, MONO8, 640x480, gain 2514/4999, exposure 23ms, 5000 frames @ 35fps.
- 2026-10-07-2240_1-Saturn4_Stack2_F1521_Decon_View_16b.png (144.34 KiB) Viewed 146 times
10 years ago using a newly purchased Nexstar 6SE and 2Mp Solar System Imager I managed this image. It took me 3 nights to get the planet on the camera sensor!
- 01_48_21_pipp_g6_ap20_conv.png (33.3 KiB) Viewed 146 times
Dave