With the usual gear I laboriously put together the passed months, I imaged Saturn and its moons. HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher Mimas and Enceladus are visible, beyond the cliche Titan, Rhea, Dione and Tethys. By the way, this evening (together with Jupiter) was the first light of the second soapbox hardware.
ASI 224MC, TSO ADC, N250/1200, HEQ5
stack of expos with the moons
a processed Saturn image
the moons dialed down
rotated
I dug out Saturn’s moons, from a longer expo series of images, and composited it with the lucky imaged Saturn. Below’s the process. There is also a random star photobombing the frame.
While recording the planet, I also exposed a few frames for the moons. Then I used Stellarium to align the properly exposed planet to the rather noisy background. The outcome had a surprise too, a 10.15m star I failed so far to identify. Below I show the steps of the process the picture went through from the stack, via composing, to the final image. Mimas is more like a wishful thinking — there are some lighter pixels there though –, but Enceladus is clearly there. The moons on the final picture are from the pixels of the original recording, the Stellarium layer was nothing but a guiding tool.
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