Saturn at 30 degrees / MAS: 8/22/22 (psychwolf)

Saturn at 30 degrees / MAS: 8/22/22

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

I'd been anxious to do some planetary photography on Saturn, especially as it is around the brightest it will be this year in the week following its Opposition last weekend. So I stopped by the Milwaukee Astronomical Society observatory last week at 8/17 and early today on 8/22 to try to image Saturn with A-scope, a 12.5 inch, f/8.8, Newtonian reflector, as it reaches a maximum altitude at around 31 degrees in the South, at 12:30am.

The scope is a 12.5 inch, f/8.8, Newtonian reflector. It is usually referred to as the "A" Scope. It sits on a massive German equatorial mount with a clock drive. RA and DEC are positioned using very large vernier setting circles. A limited fine slew capability (paddle controller) is provided for both axes. A 50mm finder is mounted piggy back. Besides its large aperture (12.5 inches), long focal length (f/8.86), and excellent mirror, the secondary mirror was reduced to increase contrast in planetary details.

Camera settings for the Saturn pic I took last night for the asi 462mc were Gain=319 Exposure=5.0310ms, Raw16, at 320x240 capture area. Processing for this was best 10% of 60 seconds, stacked. I then normalized the brightness of the stack by 65% in AS3! settings. Following that, I added contrast and ran the image through denoise. Areas to improve - I will try registrax wavelets settings next time. Coloration could be tweaked, but I do not have my processing rig up and running yet. Focus wasn't as crisp as I'd love it to be yet, but it was getting there! This is a neverending hobby, so let me know if you have some ideas to try with processing or acquisition.

Milwaukee Astronomical Society

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	n/a
Started	n/a
Astrometry.net job	n/a
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):