TheSkySearchers

After culling through about 450 frames (whew), here is my best single-frame capture of the Jupiter-Saturn 2020 Conjunction event - plus or minus one day!

Be sure and check out the meta-data of the photo file. Personally, I think this image is better than my 10-stack image of the same! I don't know why that is, maybe I fined-tuned my processing a bit better after tweaking the various images of this conjunction beforehand. Also, this was the sixth frame I snagged that evening at 6:03 PM CST so it was a degree or two higher than the rest of the frames I captured on the previous two days. Higher in the sky, better imaging. That always works for me!

My processing work flow was similar to my previous submissions to TSS. I used three layer splits plus isolated each element for some finer tweaking: Saturn, Jupiter, and Jupiter's four moons. I was able to enhance and "tighten up" the moons and blasted them with more luminance and contrast and a bit of extra color saturation. With Saturn, I removed some color saturation to remove some of the atmospheric chromance due to its lower surface luminosity as compared to Jupiter. With Jupiter, I basically digitally Isolated it and brought the over-exposed luminance levels down about "three photographic stops" (old school photographic term) which may be equivalent to either a 200% or 300% drop in luminance levels. Frankly I'm not sure how that translates from the analog to the digital world. Let's say it was "a lot." I wished I could have exposed for Jupiter which would have given me more Jovian detail in the banding, but it was probably a lost cause anyway given how deep the event was occurring in the atmospheric soup anyway. If I had exposed for Jupiter, Saturn would have been hopelessly lost in the background and I don't think I have the necessary skills or processing software to bring the planet out of the murk.

I did bracket exposures with 20 image strings. On the previous two days I was starting out at 1/3rd second exposures and worked my way up to 1/15th second exposures. In the meantime, the pair was descending closer and closer to the horizon with each passing minute. On this date I started out at 1/5 second exposures at ISO 100 because of my previous two days experience with this fairly rare event. I took my best guess, got a string of 20 plus images and then dropped back to 1/3 second and worked my way up to 1/15 second. I reviewed some of the images on my camera's LCD display and thought 1/5 second was yielding the best compromise and so I grabbed another 100 images before I ended my session. It was getting really cold, too. However, by that time, the pair were getting a little too low in the sky anyway. I did grab a few lunar images and I haven't even looked at those yet. I will later today.

Anyway, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it!

MERRY CHRISTMAS Y'ALL!


Meade 10-inch f/10 SCT w/UHC coatings and mirror lock.
Canon EOS 80D DSLR unmodified
1/5 second ISO 100
Single-frame, no filters

nicely done , thx .

Thanks, messier.