Saturn and Its Moons

Blogged by Xiao Sun on January 12, 2009 and tagged with Sample Images, Moon, Saturn.

Astronomy amateur Stuart Thomson sent us a picture of Saturn with three of its moons orbiting the planet. The image was taken on the morning of the 6th of January between 0400 and 0500.

Here is what he wrote in the e-mail:

Telescope is a 10″ Meade RCX400GPS. I used a 2x telextender to make the scope f/16.

I shot 10 avi's with my DMK 21AF04.AS, I use a yellow filter in front of the DMK to filter some of the blue (scattered) light out to try to minimise atmospheric refraction effects. I also use a Phillips SPC900NC camera to capture colour pictures.

I processed the avi's in Registax (including resampling at 1.5x), then used CCDStack to combine the luminance shots from the DMK camera, the stacking brings out the moons but blurs any atmospheric detail on the planet surface. After this process I have a master luminance picture and a colour picture, I use CCDStack to align these, then combine them in Photoshop. Adjustment of the levels and curves in Photoshop results in the image you see here.

Great work Stuart! Thanks!

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