Saturn stacked

Had another go at Registax... Had to install version 6, and the update (version 6.1.0.8), to the new quad core computer, John Charles.

Learned that version 6 cannot read Canon CR2 raw files. Returned to Digital Photo Pro (version 3.8.1.0) to do batch conversion tasks.

Trial 1. Converted the 3888 by 2592 pixel camera files to TIF 16 bit. Fifteen of them. Each ballooned to 55 MB. Converted the 10 darks as well. Loaded the lights. Decided to skip the dark subtraction. Reviewed Maxson's version 6 tutorial. Set the following Align settings:

• min dis btn: 10
• intensity: 3x3
• prefilter: normalize

I then manually set and removed some alignment points. Ended up with approximate 17. Told it to Align, saw it start, saw an hourglass, and I headed into some other software.

Twenty minutes later I checked the Windows Task Manager. Registax was using three quarters of a gigabyte but the processor activity was zero. Hung. I killed it.

Trial 2. Returned to DPP. Ran the Trimming/Angle Adjustment tool. After finding a cool tip online for applying the crop to the batch, I had a set of smaller TIFs, 11MB each.

Again, loaded the lights only. Same settings. Had about 12 alignment points. The Align and Stack went fine. In wavelets, I used the following settings:

• linked
• 1, 0.20, 0.080, 100
• 2, 0.20, 0.070, 100
• 3, 0.55, 0.090, 100
• 4, 0.15, 0.100, 1
• 5, 0.15, 0.100, 1
• 6, 0.15, 0.100, 1

Still don't have Photoshop on the new box (it's only on John Kim Chi). So did some quick adjustments to the TIF in IrfanView (version 4.35) using the Color Correction tool.

• increased brightness slightly
• increased contrast slightly
• dropped saturation a few points

Saved to JPG.

I like it. For a first serious attempt. Hints of the equatorial belt, the Cassini Division (on the right), planet shadow on the rings (to the left).