Observation Log – 1/24/2009 – Saturn
The nights plan was to take some images of Saturn with my Celestron NexImage imager. It was cold and a little windy, there was also a lot of light pollution – the neighbors’ security lights stayed on the whole time I was out.
I started observing just before 10:00 PM and Saturn was already high enough in the eastern sky to see and was very easy to view with the 25mm Plossl eyepiece. The 25mm with the 3x Barlow brought out even more detail. The rings are edge on and I think it is cool how you can see the thin shadow across the planet where the rings cross. Several of Saturn’s moons were also visible.
I made several attempts to get some images Saturn. Trying several different capture programs and a variety of different settings. With the 3x Barlow and with out it. With the 3x Barlow I had a lot of problems trying to get good focus, I think the 3x may be pushing the magnification too much unless the seeing is really good.
I actually did get some pretty good AVI video of Saturn, but after processing they just did not turn out well. With the rings being edge on, you can see the shadow across the planet but you can not see the edge of the rings on each side of the planet.
I learned a lot about the camera settings with the different software and PCs (I used both my ASUS eee PC running Linux and my Dell Laptop running Windows XP more about that in another post) and I am looking forward to getting another chance to image the planet again.
I stopped observing just after midnight. There was still a lot I had planned to do and I probably could have taken some better images but I just got over being cold so I called it a night.
