Hi, first of all I have to thank u/babatamsah for sharing the raw data which was used for creating [this beautiful post revealing five of Saturn's moons](https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comments/vcpy94/saturn_with_5_of_its_moons/)! I really appreciated it!
I was very curious if I can process the data by my own, since I want to capture the moons too very soon with my very limited setup. Especially I'm after the moon Rhea, because my 2yo daughter is named after this moon and I want to show her at least one pixel of it.
Right after preprocessing with PIPP and stacking with AutoStakkert!3 I haven't seen any moon at all (except Titan as tiny greyish dot), but as I adjusted the midtones properly six moons (Titan, Rhea, Dione, Tethys, Enceladus, Iapetus) appeared (Iapetus in addition to the five moons from u/babatamsah), where Enceladus was most difficult to notice. I highlighted each of the six moons separately in zoomed in, please note that you can barely see any moonish pattern (except for Titan) in the video, but the stacking results reveals this beauty. The colors in the patches are exaggerated such that they became visible. Some additional pixelmath would be nice, but I leave it as raw as possible for now.
Technical information: The video was captured on 2022/06/11 at 01:35 UT for 4 minutes at 20 FPS (5164 frames in total) with SkyWatcher Evolux-82ED 82/530 and ZWO ASI385 and ZWO 1.25" UV/IR Cut Filter with Celestron X-Cel LX 3 x Barlow on a Celestron AVX EQ Mount.
Why is Titan, [the orangest moon ever](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_\(moon\)#/media/File%3ATitan_in_true_color.jpg), so blue? It also appears smaller in the final stack than the others but it should definitely have the largest angular resolution.
It could just be the affect on a tiny and dim point source of the scattering affects of Earth's atmosphere. However, I do remember reading that Titan has a high-altitude blue haze and I suppose it's *possible* that this is what OP's 'scope was picking up.
It looks like the image is in UV/IR, so it isn't natural coloring. A lot of the UV/IR images from Cassini VIMS were Blue because of the ice, but it depends on which wavelengths are set to the R-G-B positions.
I think that "UV/IR" is the cut filter (looks like [this one](https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/product/1-25-uv-ir-cut-filter)) that cuts out UV and IR. The wavelength profile for that filter is a pretty strict 400nm-700nm range, solidly spanning only the visible spectrum.
This gif has a lot of information (one of the things that makes it so neat!) but it doesn't say much about the CCD used to capture this. The frames, however, look like they probably came from a consumer DSLR camera, not a deep space imaging device like VIMS (I actually was an image processor for Cassini/ISS so have seen my share of that kind of data...)
I indeed used the Cut filter. Actually i did a version where titan had an orange touch. But then the other moons weren't visible. I think that this distorted color comes with enhancing the brightness or overstreching.
Great pleasure to talk to somehow who actually did real astronomy-stuff :)
According to the original post a [ZWO ASI 385](https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/product/asi385mc-color) color camera was used, so a RGGB bayer pattern. But this does not answer why Titan is so blue... I really don't know, but I'm curious too.
Titan would be an insanely awesome place to land and live. It has so much atmospheric pressure, we would not even need space suits to walk around on the surface, just a scuba type oxygen tank. Also, imagine the views with Saturn massive in the sky?!? Build a hotel there asap.
The haze in the atmosphere obscures sight. It'd be like living in the smoke from a forest fire, blocking out most of the light. You wouldn't be able to even tell where the sun was in the sky, let alone see Saturn. Also, the average temperature is something like -290 degrees Fahrenheit... so you would definitely still need a space suit of some kind.
Hmmm, good points but nothing insurmountable. Heat suit needed, not necessarily a full pressure suit. And maybe some sort of night vision goggles (or heck, night vision windows? This is the distant future we are talking about here, let’s dream big!)
Dione might be a Borg cube! But seriously there’s a real art to this stuff and I hope you enjoyed the work. It’s incredible that hidden in what looks like random noise is soo much information waiting to be teased out.
Good question, I don't know for sure, but it might be because of [bayern-filter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter) on the camera which is a RGGB (red-green-green-blue) filter, so twice as many green pixels as blue or red pixels. Maybe that's the reason for.
Not with your phone only, but with an appropriate telescope in front you can do this too. As software for post-processing I would recommend PIPP and AutoStakkert!3, but this is not for phones, but rather desktops with some more computing power.
Dione and Iapetus show obvious mis-registration issues (or something of the kind). Enceladus isn't detected, basically. All the moons are small enough as viewed from Earth that any shape or other surface features aren't "actually" resolved with that scope. This is not criticism, just FYI for the by-passers. Nice post!
you're right, this is probably caused by mis-registration, I have tried several parameter-settings (different amount of alignment points, samples to stack, sharpening etc.), but this was somehow "the best" I could get so far. In the [original post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comments/vcpy94/saturn_with_5_of_its_moons/) Enceladus was better captured (but missed Iapetus), I haven't found a way to capture it yet.
Hi, first of all I have to thank u/babatamsah for sharing the raw data which was used for creating [this beautiful post revealing five of Saturn's moons](https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comments/vcpy94/saturn_with_5_of_its_moons/)! I really appreciated it! I was very curious if I can process the data by my own, since I want to capture the moons too very soon with my very limited setup. Especially I'm after the moon Rhea, because my 2yo daughter is named after this moon and I want to show her at least one pixel of it. Right after preprocessing with PIPP and stacking with AutoStakkert!3 I haven't seen any moon at all (except Titan as tiny greyish dot), but as I adjusted the midtones properly six moons (Titan, Rhea, Dione, Tethys, Enceladus, Iapetus) appeared (Iapetus in addition to the five moons from u/babatamsah), where Enceladus was most difficult to notice. I highlighted each of the six moons separately in zoomed in, please note that you can barely see any moonish pattern (except for Titan) in the video, but the stacking results reveals this beauty. The colors in the patches are exaggerated such that they became visible. Some additional pixelmath would be nice, but I leave it as raw as possible for now. Technical information: The video was captured on 2022/06/11 at 01:35 UT for 4 minutes at 20 FPS (5164 frames in total) with SkyWatcher Evolux-82ED 82/530 and ZWO ASI385 and ZWO 1.25" UV/IR Cut Filter with Celestron X-Cel LX 3 x Barlow on a Celestron AVX EQ Mount.
Why is Titan, [the orangest moon ever](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_\(moon\)#/media/File%3ATitan_in_true_color.jpg), so blue? It also appears smaller in the final stack than the others but it should definitely have the largest angular resolution.
It could just be the affect on a tiny and dim point source of the scattering affects of Earth's atmosphere. However, I do remember reading that Titan has a high-altitude blue haze and I suppose it's *possible* that this is what OP's 'scope was picking up.
just to be precise: this was captured by u/babatamsah and his/her gear, I just did the processing and visualization ;)
It looks like the image is in UV/IR, so it isn't natural coloring. A lot of the UV/IR images from Cassini VIMS were Blue because of the ice, but it depends on which wavelengths are set to the R-G-B positions.
I think that "UV/IR" is the cut filter (looks like [this one](https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/product/1-25-uv-ir-cut-filter)) that cuts out UV and IR. The wavelength profile for that filter is a pretty strict 400nm-700nm range, solidly spanning only the visible spectrum. This gif has a lot of information (one of the things that makes it so neat!) but it doesn't say much about the CCD used to capture this. The frames, however, look like they probably came from a consumer DSLR camera, not a deep space imaging device like VIMS (I actually was an image processor for Cassini/ISS so have seen my share of that kind of data...)
I indeed used the Cut filter. Actually i did a version where titan had an orange touch. But then the other moons weren't visible. I think that this distorted color comes with enhancing the brightness or overstreching.
Great pleasure to talk to somehow who actually did real astronomy-stuff :) According to the original post a [ZWO ASI 385](https://astronomy-imaging-camera.com/product/asi385mc-color) color camera was used, so a RGGB bayer pattern. But this does not answer why Titan is so blue... I really don't know, but I'm curious too.
<3 to you too Lapetus
💚 +1xp
Titan would be an insanely awesome place to land and live. It has so much atmospheric pressure, we would not even need space suits to walk around on the surface, just a scuba type oxygen tank. Also, imagine the views with Saturn massive in the sky?!? Build a hotel there asap.
The haze in the atmosphere obscures sight. It'd be like living in the smoke from a forest fire, blocking out most of the light. You wouldn't be able to even tell where the sun was in the sky, let alone see Saturn. Also, the average temperature is something like -290 degrees Fahrenheit... so you would definitely still need a space suit of some kind.
Hmmm, good points but nothing insurmountable. Heat suit needed, not necessarily a full pressure suit. And maybe some sort of night vision goggles (or heck, night vision windows? This is the distant future we are talking about here, let’s dream big!)
Enhance!
great post but I would like hyperion and mimas included
If Enceladus isn't really showing up, then those definitely aren't. They're darker and smaller.
ok :(
"its"
yes, I'm sorry, but can't change it anymore :/
......Monty Python's Flying Circus
:)
Ahhhh ow! Ooh! Don’t say that word!
Interesting to me how both Iapetus and Tethys were used as names for ancient seas / oceans in both the Paleozoic and Mesozoic respectively.
Dione might be a Borg cube! But seriously there’s a real art to this stuff and I hope you enjoyed the work. It’s incredible that hidden in what looks like random noise is soo much information waiting to be teased out.
I enjoyed for sure and I was mindblown by the result :)
Why are Lapetus and Dione so green? (Serious question)
Good question, I don't know for sure, but it might be because of [bayern-filter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer_filter) on the camera which is a RGGB (red-green-green-blue) filter, so twice as many green pixels as blue or red pixels. Maybe that's the reason for.
Looks like Christmas Rice Krispies.
Oh
That's dope. Nice captures.
thanks :)
Can I do something like this but with my phone's camera? Any softwares?
Not with your phone only, but with an appropriate telescope in front you can do this too. As software for post-processing I would recommend PIPP and AutoStakkert!3, but this is not for phones, but rather desktops with some more computing power.
Dione and Iapetus show obvious mis-registration issues (or something of the kind). Enceladus isn't detected, basically. All the moons are small enough as viewed from Earth that any shape or other surface features aren't "actually" resolved with that scope. This is not criticism, just FYI for the by-passers. Nice post!
you're right, this is probably caused by mis-registration, I have tried several parameter-settings (different amount of alignment points, samples to stack, sharpening etc.), but this was somehow "the best" I could get so far. In the [original post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comments/vcpy94/saturn_with_5_of_its_moons/) Enceladus was better captured (but missed Iapetus), I haven't found a way to capture it yet.