Crips Fall Night with Saturn

It’s been a busy year and I haven’t taken my telescope out much. It doesn’t help that the planets were all below the horizon at the same time, so I didn’t really bother planning any photos. That’s how Saturn snuck up on me, the other day I thought to look and to my surprise Saturn was high in the sky at a reasonable hour!

I tried two different shots, one was a 2x barlow AND a 3x barlow combined to go really zoomed in. The other was using only the 3x barlow.

Each image was about the same, leave the gain pretty high but the shutter as fast as possible to get as many frames as I could. I think the 3x barlow lens shutter ended up being 4ms. I don’t recall what it was for the stacked option, I believe 10ms.

Processing was identical for each: 10% stack in autostakkert, then some wavelet adjustments in Registax, and some final denoise and level adjustments on my phone.

First up, the 3x barlow image:

Even with a wobbly atmosphere this picture came out great. The gap in the rings is clearly visible, and the Cassini gap is just barely visible.

Now for the 3x and 2x stacked barlows:

This image is also good, but it’s not better. 6x is likely beyond the physical limitations of my telescope, and now I’m looking through two (cheap) lenses. If I digitally zoomed the 3x barlow image it would probably be better.

No matter the results, Saturn is gorgeous, the fall weather is crisp and lovely, and astronomy is peaceful!