Saturn on July 12, 2013

Here are some Saturn images (first imaging from the new Walnut Ridge Observatory at West Point, IN). Seeing was downright diabolical--maybe 1/5, if that.  Focus was almost impossible to achieve as the image was "boiling" (the planet was visibly twinkling to the naked eye). The captures were with the 14 inch ACF with a Microsoft LifeCam Cinema HD. Captures were at 30FPS, 1280x720. Each capture was 2000 frames, with 400 and 800 of the best frames stacked for the images respectively. Stacking in Registax 5.1, wavelet processing in Registax 6 and lots of processing in Photoshop. The results show some nice color, but little detail. You can just make out the yellowish area in the north polar region which is where the polar hexagon lies--as captured very well by other amateur imagers as well as space probes.  The first image is a composite of the two processed images. It has a little more color depth and contrast, but the Cassini division is not even visible. Click on the individual images for a larger pic.