Tried to image a widefield with Jupiter and this happened

[deadfraggle]

I think I was having better luck imaging widefields with my cheap point-and-shoot. I have yet to get a good image of stars with my Olympus E-410, though I have not had much practice in the last couple of months due to the weather or the moon. Don't know what I did wrong, but as you can see in the image Jupiter gives off an awful glare. Took a dozen 15 second exposures at 800 iso and they all came out like this.

[rfdesigner]

First, jupiter is VERY bright, this is not a major issue. One of the most sensitive ways to show up any fractional optical defect is to take a long shot of a point source on a black background... i.e. stars (or planets at low magnification)

Second, does the lens have any slight smears on it? they can produce a diffration pattern, which is what this looks like.

Clean the filter properly and this problem may go away.

Derek

[pete_l]

A couple of things.

So far as Jupiter goes, the smearing in all directions may be due to high, thin cloud - possibly containing ice crystals that refract the light.

Also, the star trails indicate the exposure is too long. Once stars start to move in the image, taking longer exposures won't bring out any dimmer stars. The reason is that you'll only get dim stars if all their light falls on the same pixels. Once stars start to trail, they're no longer illuminating the same pixels, so that's as bright and as many as they'll ever be.

[VigdisVZ]

I think I was having better luck imaging widefields with my cheap point-and-shoot. I have yet to get a good image of stars with my Olympus E-410, though I have not had much practice in the last couple of months due to the weather or the moon. Don't know what I did wrong, but as you can see in the image Jupiter gives off an awful glare. Took a dozen 15 second exposures at 800 iso and they all came out like this.

First of all, jupter is so bright it's going to outshine any stars. Secondly 15 seconds will give you star trails. There are two ways, either you plop your camera on a motorized mount, or you can do like I do in my wide fields, that isI usually keep time to 10 seconds, and try to use a much wider angle, preferably 18mm or wider, and get some horizon or landscape features to give context.

Also that seems like too few stars for 15sec @ ISO 800, what aperture are you running at? At F/3.5 i get a lot more stars with 10 sec ISO 400 usually.

[tich]

I've only just started to have a go at some widefield shots with a canon 1000D with the standard lens. I generally set the lens on 18mm & set the exposure for 20 seconds at ISO 1600 with the camera fitted on a fixed tripod. My only problems are achieving a decent focus & as the other posters have said Jupiter will outshine any star so there's no avoiding it. Here's some stills I did when I was attempting some timelapse DSLR shooting below I did of orion recently with the camera settings I used. The bottom image the focus was off unfortunately but I'm quite happy with them being a newbie to it.

[deadfraggle]

First off, this forum is awesome! Thank you for the quick replies, and please forgive my tardiness in responding.

One of the most sensitive ways to show up any fractional optical defect is to take a long shot of a point source on a black background.

Nice. "Fractional optical defect"... Now I know what it is called.

Second, does the lens have any slight smears on it? they can produce a diffration pattern, which is what this looks like.

Omg yes, in fact a few fingerprints. (And I thought I had been extra careful handling these lenses.) I feel so stupid now. Didn't notice in the dark.

So far as Jupiter goes, the smearing in all directions may be due to high, thin cloud - possibly containing ice crystals that refract the light.

It has been wet weather for the past month, and last night's temperature dropped quickly, so maybe ice crystals made the situation worse.

Also, the star trails indicate the exposure is too long.

Yes, I noticed. 15 seconds was fine for my point-and-shoot, but the normal lens on this Olympus seems to give a more zoomed in viewed. I did try to image with the wide lens at 15 seconds, but had a hard time capturing anything but the brightest stars.

...either you plop your camera on a motorized mount, or you can do like I do in my wide fields, that is I usually keep time to 10 seconds...

Would love a mount. Any free? But seriously, acquiring one may not happen soon, so I will try reducing the exposure time.

and try to use a much wider angle, preferably 18mm or wider, and get some horizon or landscape features to give context.

The included wide angle lens is 14-42mm (normal is 40-150mm), but as I mentioned, I had a harder time capturing stars with it. Perhaps I need to zoom in a little?

@Proto Star: Great pictures. I can't help but notice at least 1 seems to have been taken in the early evening.

I live in a small town, but maybe I'm not getting far enough away from light pollution. Or those Canon cameras are just exceptionally good for the task. At any rate, there's room to improve for now with what I have.

Please help me with these settings. I have no idea how to set them for astro photography.

WB - (white balance?) - currently set to Auto

Picture Mode - currently set to Natural. Other options: Vivid, Muted, Monotone

Metering - Hmmm... the fist box is all white with a circle and cross. 2nd box is all white with a centre circle. 3rd box is black with a white dot, followed by a box with HI and a box with SH. Currently set to the first option.

AF Area - set to the option that has a dot directly centre two brackets. The other options are Auto and a dot near the left or right bracket.

AF Mode - ???? - Options are S-AF, C-AF, MF, S-AF+MF, and C-AF+MF. Set to MF.

I lied. I don't know how to set these for any type of photography.

[VigdisVZ]

The included wide angle lens is 14-42mm (normal is 40-150mm), but as I mentioned, I had a harder time capturing stars with it. Perhaps I need to zoom in a little?

14mm, what a luxury! Zoom out max I'm currently looking at a 11-16mm F/2.8 Tokina lens. I'm stuck at 18 for now.

Here are some examples I've shot with my 18-55mm at 18mm. Around 10 seconds, ISO varies a bit but 400 or a little more. Sometimes less.

The last one ofcourse is a 10 minute shot.

The only reason to zoom in more would be to take close ups with your 150mm, but youre going to get very heavy star trailing unless you really shorten your exposures, and then you might get so little data you need to take a stack of pictures and merge in Deep Sky Stacker.

Please help me with these settings. I have no idea how to set them for astro photography.

WB - (white balance?) - currently set to Auto

Picture Mode - currently set to Natural. Other options: Vivid, Muted, Monotone

Metering - Hmmm... the fist box is all white with a circle and cross. 2nd box is all white with a centre circle. 3rd box is black with a white dot, followed by a box with HI and a box with SH. Currently set to the first option.

AF Area - set to the option that has a dot directly centre two brackets. The other options are Auto and a dot near the left or right bracket.

AF Mode - ???? - Options are S-AF, C-AF, MF, S-AF+MF, and C-AF+MF. Set to MF.

White balance is to compensate for non-white light in the environment where the color temperature differs. I usually set to tungsten when shooting wide fields because I like the blue hint. You should try a few settings and see if you find any that you like better, but I find most of the settings just produce a sticky brown sky.

Picture mode, I suggest leaving the camera settings as neutral as possible, and do post processing on your PC.

Metering seems to have to do to with exposure, you can probably ignore that as you should be shooting in manual.

AF settings should be ignored as you should be shooting with manual focus.

[rfdesigner]

Would love a mount. Any free? But seriously, acquiring one may not happen soon, so I will try reducing the exposure time.

Once you've nailed astrophotography with a stationary camera, look up "barn door mount"

There are various plans around for DIY ones for very little cost, and this will allow you to take substantially longer images.

Clear skys

Derek