Another iPhone photo of Saturn processed by Tim Dey in photoshop

I took this last night through the c14 with about a thousand power on the eyepiece. The image looked fuzzy and offered no more detail to the naked eye than a lower powered view.

Here is the result of that photo.

We will be able to do better with the Stellacam and a dazzle card in the future.

Handheld iPhone photo through Televue 8mm and Meade 2x Barlow. At 3911mm focal length configuration for c14 giving 977 power at the eyepiece.

Considering the amount of cold frost and moisture in the air the images were incredibly stable last night. Possibly due to a very calm sky with very slow moving thin clouds.

Eyepiece views actually seemed to show more band gradient detail, meaning cloud band variations in detail when looking through thin clouds late in the viewing session. This means I needed to use a filter to cut down the light exposure to get a better naked eye view through the eyepiece.

At times the view improved if I covered half the front of the c14 with the shutter half exposing the sky. This would almost be the similar to using an offset mask to cut down on the telescopes front aperture. Perhaps an aperture mask would have improved the c14s viewing by cutting down on the brightness at the eyepiece. Perhaps ill make a quick aperture mask for future viewing. These are often referred to as offset masks and were used by astronomers with Newtonian reflectors to get good unobstructed views of a planet with a Newtonian reflector. But that is another story.





Quick description: Saturn, iPhone handheld shot, auto exposed, at 977x at eyepiece, photoshop work by Tim Dey.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad