With these two guys so low on the horizon, it was really hard to get focus. I forgot to add my L filter also, but the atmosphere was the big culprit... Finally, since Jupiter and Saturn are so different in brightness, I could not come up with "happy medium" settings for gain and exposure, but hey - Jupiter and Saturn are on the same frame!
I also learned tonight that my laptop really struggles with processing frames in FC when I want to use the whole sensor. Regardless of USB traffic setting, I kept dropping frames and crashed FC a couple of times. Could not get more than 500 frames
exp = 24.3 ms
gain = 145
250 frames (best 50% of 500) - really needed a lot more than this...
Anyway, everything else worked great. The CEM120 pointing accuracy is quite good and finding/framing this pair was easier than I thought, even with a lot of background sunlight at 4:50 pm.
My family and I also observed this visually through our 12" dob, both last night and again tonight. It was AWESOME! We counted 7 moons total: all 4 of Jupiter's Galilean moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto) and 3 of Saturn's (Titan, Rhea, and either Dione or Tethys). Back in September, when I first got the dob, the views of Jupiter and Saturn (high in the sky at that time) were razor sharp - unlike even the best nights with the 8" SCT.
Thanks for looking and Happy Holidays!
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