Saturn

Saturn, 6/14/2011, 11:58 PM EST
300mm, SCT, f/25, unbinned, unguided
Lumenera Skynyx 2.0M, 1533 frames, 13.1ms exposure
Stacked with Registax 6, total exposure 189.9 sec
©Billy Vazquez VAO, Webster, NY

People hear the word Saturn and the first thing it comes to their minds is... Rings! Well either that or you are a history buff and know that it is named after the Greek god of harvest, Saturnus. But if you are reading this, you are probably thinking about the gas planet in our solar system with the magnificient rings around it. Since I was a kid, I always wanted to look at Saturn through a telescope. What could be better than to see those magnificent rings, I heard so much about in books(back then there was no Internet as we know it today, books was all I had!). Well years have passed, and to the right is my first imaging attempt at Saturn from VAO. As you can see it is not the best image of Saturn. Either by my lack of experience imaging or because it was only about 10 degrees above the horizon. The closer a celestial object is to the horizon the worse the image gets. The reason for this is the Earth atmosphere. It protects us from solar radiation but its a nuissance for observational astronomers and astrophotographers.

Saturn, 6/14/2011, 11:58 PM EST
Sobel Edge Detection, Image processed with GIMP
©Billy Vazquez VAO, Webster, NY

Now back to Saturn, with a little bit of image processing we can obtain outstanding results even with poor quality images. I used a technique called Sobel Edge Detection. This technique is implemented in GIMP 2.6 an imaging processing software. As you can see on the image, it brings out the edge details of a picture and brings out the details of Saturn rings. Also, you can see details of Saturn bands.  So it is not a Hubble Space Telescope image but even under the worst conditions, this image makes you wonder what can be done under better "seeing".  Stay tuned there would be more Saturn(and hopefully better) in the future.