Bryan wilburn
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While not the best image of Saturn I’ve ever captured, it’s not all that bad considering the conditions. The predicted conditions were going to peak at 11PM.
I drove out to PINS, Padre Isl Nat Seashore TX, and the Bird Island Campground around 5:15 and started setting up the C11 mirror. When the sun set at around 5:45 I could see Saturn around 20 degrees over the Eastern Horizon. Then I started the CGX alignment process, and while it was close it was a bit off. I left the finder scope at home and that caused all kinds of problems finding Saturn in the eyepiece.
I started imaging around 7:47, long before the ideal time as the planet was still deep in the atmosphere. But I wanted to get something.
The initial set up was the Canon R5 with a Tela Vue 2x Powermate, the Powermate had a 2” adapter. Think Barlow with better optics, and it does not impact focus point. The C11 has a focal length of 2800mm. The resulting FL was on the order of 5,600mm.
But the image was a bit small, even though it is a large Planert, it was still 886,000,000 miles out in space. Saturn wants a scope on the order of 7000mm. So I pulled the 4X Powermate in the bag and got a FL of 11,200mm. And got a bigger image, but the atmospherics still caused a bit of softness.
For a capture program I was using Backyard EOS, and it has the ability to use the Canon EOS R5 digital magnification setting to image with. For a resulting FL of 56,000mm. The downside is after a brief time it shuts off and drops to normal again. So, I had to adjust the shutter speed to get at least 1600 frames, and a 4.79 GB AVI file.
At 8:01PM I dropped the hand controlled and as it bounced aff the tripod it hit the Align button and the mount slewed way off. I was not able to get the scope back on Saturn and packed it in. Better luck next time…
Processing was with Registax 6 and final polishing in Photoshop and Topaz.
Celestron C11 on a CGX Mount, Tela Vue Powermate 4X 1/160th ISO 2000. 160 Seconds of vid 1600 frames.
I drove out to PINS, Padre Isl Nat Seashore TX, and the Bird Island Campground around 5:15 and started setting up the C11 mirror. When the sun set at around 5:45 I could see Saturn around 20 degrees over the Eastern Horizon. Then I started the CGX alignment process, and while it was close it was a bit off. I left the finder scope at home and that caused all kinds of problems finding Saturn in the eyepiece.
I started imaging around 7:47, long before the ideal time as the planet was still deep in the atmosphere. But I wanted to get something.
The initial set up was the Canon R5 with a Tela Vue 2x Powermate, the Powermate had a 2” adapter. Think Barlow with better optics, and it does not impact focus point. The C11 has a focal length of 2800mm. The resulting FL was on the order of 5,600mm.
But the image was a bit small, even though it is a large Planert, it was still 886,000,000 miles out in space. Saturn wants a scope on the order of 7000mm. So I pulled the 4X Powermate in the bag and got a FL of 11,200mm. And got a bigger image, but the atmospherics still caused a bit of softness.
For a capture program I was using Backyard EOS, and it has the ability to use the Canon EOS R5 digital magnification setting to image with. For a resulting FL of 56,000mm. The downside is after a brief time it shuts off and drops to normal again. So, I had to adjust the shutter speed to get at least 1600 frames, and a 4.79 GB AVI file.
At 8:01PM I dropped the hand controlled and as it bounced aff the tripod it hit the Align button and the mount slewed way off. I was not able to get the scope back on Saturn and packed it in. Better luck next time…
Processing was with Registax 6 and final polishing in Photoshop and Topaz.
Celestron C11 on a CGX Mount, Tela Vue Powermate 4X 1/160th ISO 2000. 160 Seconds of vid 1600 frames.
