Jupiter and Venus. Dslr on tripod..Possible???

[allcart]

Tried to get my first pic and sighting of Jupiter on the 18th August during a fairly clear morning sky. I took loads of pics in batches, at various ISO and exposure times, re-alining between each series of pics. The good news for me was that I saw Jupiter with 4 moons quite clearly on my lcd screen at 10x magnification. I was using stacked lenses at over 1100mm.

The sad news is that although I could see it and photograph it, the pics are not clear. I see no detail at all, and Jupiter and its moons are just bright blobs. You can see what it is supposed to be, but I could have made a better pic in photoshop.

I tried stacking frames in DSS and saw no improvement on just using a single frame.

Are my expectations too high or is it actally possible to get a good pic using a dslr and tripod with no tracking ability. I see that Venus is showing at night, and would like to see her as well when weather permits.

[allcart]

Sorry, probably should have put this in the imaging forum.

[JamesF]

If you're picking up the moons in the same shot then it's possible that Jupiter itself is heavily over-exposed. 1100mm is also really not that big a focal length for planetary imaging. You'll often find people using five to ten metres.

Ideally you need a lot of frames to stack -- at least hundreds -- taken within quite a short time-frame. If you look at some of the images of Jupiter in the planetary section many will be 30 frames per second or more over a period of two or three minutes, perhaps longer.

It's not a task that a DSLR is ideal for.

James

[allcart]

Thanks James, I think you are right. I may try movie mode at 60 fps and see if that produces anything usable. Or maybe just stick to wide field.

It was still nice to see Jupiter for the first time.

[Viv]

Moved to imaging-planetary

Afraid James is exactly right, DSLR is not for planets ............