2013-02-13 – 180,000 video frames of Saturn made this

2013-02-13, 3am:

Wake up and smell the Saturn…and then shoot 180,000 video frames of it through my telescope.

2 weeks later:

Finally finish processing and share, because sharing is caring!

How it was done

This image of Saturn was created from ~180,000 frames of video collected on 2013-02-13. Saturn was about 35 degrees in altitude at my observing location, in moderate seeing conditions and atmospheric disturbance. The video frames were stacked using Autostakkert2 and post-processed in Photoshop CS2.

In particular, more than 40 2-minute video clips were stacked independently using Autostakkert2 video processing software, running in WINE on Linux. I used the 1.5x upscaling feature on each clip using 30%-50% of the frames. Then each clip’s stacked output TIF was re-stacked together to create a final, smooth, image that could be heavily sharpened in Photoshop CS2 to bring out hidden detail, without causing too much noise.

 

Equipment Used:
Zhumell Z10 10″ Dobsonian telescope
DIY Eqatorial platform for sidereal tracking
Canon T2i 550D (unmodified) in movie crop mode
2x Zhumell 2″ ED Barlow lens
Camera controlled with DSLR controller on an Android tablet