dslr imaging with a dob

[redgiantjohn]

hi all i own a 6" dob and the last few observing nights ive been delving into a bit of very basic imaging just with a universal camera adaptor and a fujifilm finepix f500 its a pretty good point and shoot camera and was at the limits of affordability at the time so couldnt stretch to a dslr im enjoying using it and have taken some half decent pictures of the moon and taken some pictures of jupiter and venus albeit with no detail jupiter came out as a greyish disc but got the moons in the shot so was pleased with how it turned out with the limitations of the camera (and scope) i know that tracking is a big thing with photography but the camera cant do long exposures so doesnt really apply. also what i did like about using the camera with the adaptor is it gives you a little viewing screen so multiple people can observe, i was just wondering how planetary and lunar imaging will turn out with a dslr camera attatched? without tracking etc i mean will it be worth buying i dslr camera will it make alot of difference to the images i get with the point and shoot?

[brantuk]

You don't need long exposure with planets and moon because they are so bright. You do need short exposures and lots of them so you can choose the good frames and reject the bad ones when stacking and aligning them. This is why most solar system imaging is done with webcams. And for that you need tracking.

With one shot cameras you accept the prevailing atmospheric conditions at the time of the click. It's quite hard to capture those fleeting moments of clarity on the target this way - a webcam and tracking increases the odds that you'll get several good frames to put together to make a nice picture.

So you can probably appreciate the difference will be a much better end result when you have more data to process from the extra frames (eg increased detail and crisper, cleaner images).

[freeflyjay]

I`m new as well and basically working with the same kind of kit except i have a 10" dob and a compact panasonic lumix, only managed decent images of the moon so far, tryed the orion nebula but can only go max 1 sec exposures without tracking or you get streaking, so dso`s are out, not had a lot of success with planets yet but i`ll have another go next good seeing.