Jupiter Skywatcher 150PL

[Ultrapenguin]

There really are some fantastic Jupiter shots on here but this is what I can get through my Skywatcher 150PL.

I would be really interested to see what others can do with simular sized scopes so I know how far I have to go ;-)

[heathenwoods]

That's great ultrapenguin - what camera did you use?

[Ultrapenguin]

I use a Creative Live Cam it has the same Sony CCD chip as the famed Philips but a fraction of the cost, mine cost £5 from ebay. For that picture I used a 2 x Barlow but instead of using the barlow complete I unscrewed the lens from the front and screwed it to the thread on the Webcam adaptor, I only recently discovered that you could do this with good quality Barlows and it has made things a lot easier. I used to suffer with alignment issues between the cam and barlow where rotating the cam even with the object perfectly centred resulted in the object disapearing from my laptop screen, now that does not happen. The only additional item in the optical chain is an IR cut filter, someone recently told me to try removing this to gain more detail, has anyone tried this? For that shot I also lowered ny FPS to 10, another trick I have learnt. That gives a longer exposure for each frame and hence the possibility of more detail, I know I have a while to go on this journey of planetry imaging and looking at where I am now compared to last year I know I can improve what I am looking for now is clarity on the images as you can see thsi one is slighty woolly not really focused. If I can fix that maybe i can get a half decent image

[Planetesimal]

Interesting what you can pick up with a camera. Jupiter never looked that good by eye through my 150PL!

[Ultrapenguin]

visually I found Jupiter needs a filter to see detail in my 150PL its just too bright otherwise. Without the filter I just see a bright white disk with faint grey bands with a filter in place it really comes alive, I suppose the advantage the webcam has is that I can vary the exposure to find that perfect view, incidently exposure on Jupiter is almost always less that 50% on my setup so it really is very bright :-)

[Planetesimal]

That's interesting to know - what kind of filter do you use?

[twintin]

That's a nice image.

[Ultrapenguin]

I actually use a moon filter, it works quite well

[Planetesimal]

Do you use a variable polarising filter or standard? I was thinking of getting a moon filter, but had ruled it out - now that you've made the very good point that it can improve views of other objects I may need to revisit that decision!

[Ultrapenguin]

it was a cheap filter purchased of Ebay, I do not believe it has any polarising properties it has a light green colour I believe it would be Kodak Wratten #11 but I am no expert on filters I purchased it because I felt the brightness of Jupiter and other objects (venus) ws hindering my observing but did not want to block too much light. Basically i was experimenting, I know not if its the best but it does work for me.

I also found the following web page quite usefull;

http://www.telescopes.com/telescopes/howdifferentfilterscanbetteryourviewarticle.cfm

[bottletopburly]

nice tips will try next time i`m out cheers

[BuzzBomb]

Brilliant. Nice detail

Sent from my GT-I9001 using Tapatalk 2

[heathenwoods]

Thanks for the excellent, detailed reply.

I use a Creative Live Cam it has the same Sony CCD chip as the famed Philips but a fraction of the cost, mine cost £5 from ebay. For that picture I used a 2 x Barlow but instead of using the barlow complete I unscrewed the lens from the front and screwed it to the thread on the Webcam adaptor, I only recently discovered that you could do this with good quality Barlows and it has made things a lot easier. I used to suffer with alignment issues between the cam and barlow where rotating the cam even with the object perfectly centred resulted in the object disapearing from my laptop screen, now that does not happen. The only additional item in the optical chain is an IR cut filter, someone recently told me to try removing this to gain more detail, has anyone tried this? For that shot I also lowered ny FPS to 10, another trick I have learnt. That gives a longer exposure for each frame and hence the possibility of more detail, I know I have a while to go on this journey of planetry imaging and looking at where I am now compared to last year I know I can improve what I am looking for now is clarity on the images as you can see thsi one is slighty woolly not really focused. If I can fix that maybe i can get a half decent image