spaceman_spiff

Thanks! I can't believe how many stars were captured in this image.

Yes S-Nova, very talented indeed!

Best thing you can do is talk to a local astro club! Luckely with planetary work you do not need a hugely precise PA. As long as the planet is not drifting off the screen every 10 seconds you should get good results!

Cheers, I like to compare this with the earlier one I did using a non-modified camera. I think I went a bit crazy stretching the red channel to show H alpha detail. I'll tone it down in my next photos! Dan.

Thanks! M13 is so rich. With more stacks, it gets better defined in the core and faint stars around the edge begin to appear! Definitely one of my favourite targets!

Again many thanks for looking! This was the last photo I took with my beloved Nikon D200 before I broke it! It is just begging for more stacks to bring out the detail.

Thanks again! quite a bit of exposure time needed to smooth the red channel enough so that it could be stretched. I had good fun with this one!

Thanks! I had trouble with colour processing, I went back later and corrected it (see the ether version in the album). M51 is a real struggle from my location. I spent hours of exposure time on it but LP makes the connection between the two galactic nuclei very hard to image. Let me know how you get on! Dan.

Thanks! I had no light pollution filter and I had no idea how to process the colours!

Yes, that's correct, normally the camera movie modes (that record onto the memory card) are down-sampled and are therefore not useful for planetary imaging. If you hook up the DSLR to a laptop running Backyard EOS it will directly record from the live view data (cropped at 5x). Some very impressive planetary images have been taken this way. I am not sure is you can record 5x live view onto the memory card, I would think they the live view is purely for looking at a scene rather than recording from. I guess it could be annoying that laptop is needed to do this but if you had a webcam, the laptop would also be necessary. Have a look at the backyard EOS help vid: www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3gkw8bx7Aw (skip to 1:35:40 for planetary) HTH Dan.

Thanks Galatic wanderer, Registax did most of the hard work ! Dan

Cool, with an 8" you should get some very nice results. You may need a 2x Barlow to get a better image scale. The 750D is a great piece of kit, you can easily do decent planetary imaging with it. There are a few things to sort first though... - Do NOT try to image with 1080p (HD) or 720p video, the camera makes the frames from the full sensor but then down samples the pixels. When you zoom in on the planet it will look very blocky. I think this is why people say DSLRs are not good for planetary. - There is an easy trick to get the best quality out of the DSLR (as good as webcam). Install a program like backyard EOS (or something similar). It has a planetary imaging mode. In this mode it will record movies onto the computer from the camera live view. To get the best resolution use 5x zoom (do not use any other zoom), for details explaining why go to the backyard EOS help video. I should mention that this works for my cameras (550D and 600D) so it should work for yours). - once you have recorded a video of the planet (up to 10 mins of video should be enough) process it in RegiStax, see the primer video on youtube to get you started. Once you have got the best image scale and pixel resolution, the result then depends on the british weather! Hope that helps! Dan.

Thanks for the nice comment , I try to write down all the settings that went into the photo for my own reference. If I change something, I can always compare it with photos posted here. What DSLR and scope have you got? If the DSLR has live view, it will double as a planetary camera as well as a DSO camera. Clear skies, Dan.

Strangely, I am coming from the opposite direction! I have only really done DSOs but I just bought an old EOS 550D for planetary work (it has a 1:1 pixel movie crop mode). Hopefully when it is attached to my Skymax 150 + 2x Barlow I should get a nice result. DSO work is great fun but I find it is quite a hand off experience. I set the guiding, start the exposures and retreat indoors. I now want to use that time setting up a planetary cam.

I agree, the astro modded 600D picks up so much more H alpha in M27 than my old Nikon. The Canon also has far less dark noise and a flatter field. I can't wait for another clear night! I want to continue my efforts with the crescent nebular to see how much detail I can get (I only got 2 light frames before dawn twilight). Dan

Thanks John, It's my first stack with an astro-modded dslr. Dan.