My latest Jupiter pic

[TRNunes]

Hi, all!

A newbie here, whose been trying to capture a good pic of Jupiter in the heavily light-polluted environs west of Chicago for about a week now. Here's my best (and likely final, until I can try again from a dark sky locale) pic of Jupiter.

For other newbies like me, here's how I captured this pic...

• Telescope: A Celestron 8SE
  
• EP: A Celestron/Plossl 17mm
  
• Camera: Canon Powershot S2 IS
  
• Camera adapter: CNC digital camera attachment kit
  
• Camera settings: 12x optical zoom, focused to 1/10, focal=f4, iso=200, focus=manual, timer=10 sec.
  

In addition to figuring out the camera settings, I learned the hard way that cameras significantly limit your field of view (I've added a Celestron f/6 reducer to my Xmas list (pained smile)). That said, I was able to capture the image using my 17mm by...

• Using the Solar/Planetary Align option
  
• Never finalizing the second step of the align process (i.e. after hitting enter following star pointer align, never hitting "Align")
  
• Aligning first with my 25mm EP, followed by my 13mm EP
  
• Quickly mounting the camera, aligning it, and zooming in once I'd aligned perfectly via the 13mm EP
  
• Continuing to manually follow Jupiter via the hand controller and the viewscreen of the camera
  

Anyway, I know the image isn't that impressive but, as it's much more impressive than any of my prior attempts, I thought I'd share my process for future newbies.

Clear skies!

PS: I've unsuccessfully tried on multiple occasions to improve the image quality using Registax 6. Most recently, I used Anypic Image Resizer to convert all my digital camera's *.jpg files to *.bmp files, used the ninox command line utility to center all the images, then processed all 92 frames via a range of Registax settings (referencing Paul Maxon's [seemingly]excellent Registax 6 preview), all with no apparent improvement. I'm guessing my lack of success using Registax is more a commentary on the quality of my light-polluted source files, but thought I'd also share my own lack of success in case another newbie's beating their head against the "Registax wall" (figuratively speaking).

[todd8137]

a 10 pound web cam and fittings would give you 2 things video and pics keep at it

[TRNunes]

a 10 pound web cam and fittings would give you 2 things video and pics keep at it

Todd,

Thanks for the response! I may eventually go the webcam route, but like the portability of a camera (which will also capture video), versus having to have a computer outside to support the webcam. Also, I already had the camera (or, rather, my wife already had the camera, which I bought for her several years ago and am now borrowing (smile)).

Great pics, btw!