Allen
Ginzburg took these shots of Jupiter and Saturn in early March '04 using his
Philips ToUcam
and 10" Meade LX200. The Great Red Spot is center right. Both pictures
have been post-processed with sharpening and Photoshop adjustments. Nice work!
Allen follwed with these images on Saturn, showing the difference that image size on the camera chip makes. He provides the following commentary...
"The
difference between these two is the focal length of the original video. I used
f/10 for the first and f/20 (a 2x barlow) for the second. The imaging chip in
the ToUcam
is 3.6mm x 2.7mm providing a field of 148x111 arc seconds at f/10 (f=2500mm)
and
74x56
arc seconds at f/20 (all at 320x240 pixels). This produces a resolution of .46
arcsconds /pixel
at f/10 and .23 arcseconds/pixel at f/20. The image at f/20 looks considerably
smoother than the one at f/10. Saturn is approximately 19" wide so in the
first image the planet is about 41 pixels across and in the second about 82
pixels across. Note that this is the planet only, the rings at their widest
point are about 43" across or a little more than double the planet."
See the ToUcam
link for pictures taken at even longer focal length.
Not to be
out-done, Astro 9 veteran Shahram Tarani used a Meade
LPI camera and software to capture this beautiful image of saturn in early
April '04. And this equally impressive image of Jupiter and the Great Red Spot.
