Bikerscum - Patrick St. Jean

I went back out tonight and had a go at imaging Saturn. There's a pretty big learning curve with this stuff, and I definitely need to practice some more. But, once I gave up trying to image with an Alt/Az setup and went back to polar alignment it all started working. I did two takes on Saturn. The first was 500 frames, using the LPI software to track and combine the individual frames. That got saved as a set of FITS files (separate red, green, and blue channels) which I then combined into one full color image. The second was 291 frames, saved as BMPs and then stacked using RegiStax. I used all defaults in RegiStax, but will play around with some of the other options later. Both turned out really well, IMO, but one of the biggest problems I had was focusing, and until the new electric focuser comes in it's going to be difficult. In addition, the dew was awful and I had to use a hair drier a few times. I've got to find a better solution than that.

All frames were taken at 0.354 second exposures, 100 gain, 40 offset, min quality 50.

They're also in the 09 Jan 2005 album