The Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn
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The Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn
Much gratitude to the Chilescope Team for making the dataset of 213 images available for processing. This was my first attempt at planets and I quickly found it was complicated by the enormous dynamic range straddling the stars, moons and planets. I settled on 10s exposures to bring out the stars and moons and single sets of R (0.03s), G (0.03s) and B (0.05s) to process the planets. Alignment and stacking was accomplished with PixInsight and AutoStakkert; R, G and B masters were manually aligned and combined in Photoshop (completed separately for Jupiter and Saturn); and color, brightness and sharpness adjustments were made with PixInsight and Photoshop. In the annotated version, moon identifications were made using TheSkyX. Those missed were Ganymede (over Jupiter) and Mimas (too faint to bring it out).
SPECIFICATIONS
Telescope
CHI-3 (1m F6.8 reflector)
Camera
FLI PL-16803
Location
El Sauce Observatory, Chile
Date of observation
Dec 21, 2020
Filters
RGB
Processing
PixInsight, AutoStakkert, Photoshop