A little help

[Redda]

Hi all, just after a little bit of advice. Been lurking on the forum for a while and picking up hints and tips from you all and decided to take the plunge and join the community.

Several years ago (more than 15) my brother was given a telescope a sky watcher 114 by 900 (on an EQ5 mount). We pointed it at Saturn and were truly amazed by what we could see, but being in our latish teens, the telescope soon ended up in the loft.

Fast forward a few years and our interest in space and science as been reborn (that and hitting 30 and deciding it would be a good hobby to master now, ready in a few years when my one year old is a few years older and probably into space – hopefully) and the telescope has been dusted off and back in use as of November 2012. Due to weather conditions we have probably only had a few nights in the garden. I have to say the eye pieces that come with it seem to be impressive but we have not been able to compare it too more expensive ones.

We seem to navigate towards Jupiter each night and have set up a Canon 1000D digital camera onto a 2x Barlow (unfortunately we cannot use the telescope as a prime focuser which from reading on the internet is a problem associated with the older Sky Watcher telescopes – if anyone has a solution that would be great).

Every now and again we manage to get a fairly decent shot of Jupiter. We zoom in quite a bit on the computer and can make out two reddish bands on a cream coloured planet. This is just taking a split second photograph. But 9 times out of 10 we seem to get an over exposed shot with the white balance (set as auto) being well off (we do have a few books and magazines to assist us).

Would we be better setting up the motor and taking longer exposures (the motor just about works and is primitive compared to what you can get now) ? Any tips on what settings we should have on the camera? I have heard that Jupiter and planets are a bit difficult to photograph and it’s better to use a webcam but for the moment what can we do with the digital camera?

Furthermore, what would your top 5 things to photograph for the very beginner astrophotographer be, based on the telescope we currently have?

Finally (and thank you if you have read this far, sorry for the waffle – first post and all so thought I would introduce myself a little) my brother and I are looking at investing in a telescope. We will have roughly £500-£750 to spend – what would you recommend considering it would be used mainly for astrophotography but also be decent for just viewing. We are trying to learn as much as we can with the telescope we currently have but due to age it’s looking a little sorry for itself (the teeth on the focuser are worn as they are made of plastic and one of the screws on the finder scope has snapped due to it being made of plastic as well which means we cannot get a perfect lock on our target).

Ideally we want a telescope that will be operational for a few years that we can add bits and bobs too before a further upgrade.

Appreciate you taking the time to read and if I get chance I will post the Jupiter shot I took. Thanks for any help you can offer.

[RikM]

Hi Redda, welcome to SGL

With the current scope and camera you have I would suggest you try getting some shots of the moon first of all.

Planets are very small and quite bright, so you need very short exposures rather than very long ones to get good shots. This is normally done with a webcam or high frame rate camera capturing many hundreds to thousands of images (normally as a video clip) and then using software like Autostakkert! 2 to get the final image.

Other than with the moon, most astrophotography is not 'point and click'. Imaging solar system objects (moon and planets) requires very different equipment to imaging deep sky objects (nebulae and galaxies etc.) Probably the best budget telescope to have a go at both (and it's good for looking through as well) is the Skywatcher 200P Newtonian on an HEQ5 mount. Really a telescope of this size aught to be on the larger NEQ6, but many people are happy with the lighter mount.

You may be able to find one second hand with your stated budget but you want one of the newer 'black diamond' models with the 2" Crayford focusser to be able to reach focus with your DSLR for deep sky images. Or look out for a modded webcam and a 2x barlow if you want to have a go at planetary imaging.

[Oblong]

If you're getting a couple of reddish bands on Jupiter, then that's pretty good going. Short exposures are the way to go with something as bright as a planet. To get the exposure right, I would start with setting a shutter speed of 1/1000 sec, and playing with the ISO setting until the exposure is correct (the 'highlights' mode doesn't show any clipping of the planet). If this ends up with a very high ISO (say, more than 1600), then the results might be a bit noisy. In that case, double the exposure time and halve the ISO. You can then take a lot of shots, and use software like Registax (free and very powerful) to align and combine your shots. This evens out image disturbance due to atmospheric effects ('seeing') and reduces noise. You will then have a clean image which should support quite a lot of sharpening (again, Registax has some nice wavelet processing to do this). You might then want to look at more magnification, particularly for a camera with a relatively large sensor.

For dimmer, more diffuse objects, then you will need to align the mount and get tracking. Experiment with longer shutter speeds - 20 to 30 seconds should be possible - and again, stacking a number of images together will help you combat random image noise, tracking errors and things that can mess up an exposure (satellites, planes, gusts of wind, etc). As Rik says, imaging deep sky versus solar system objects requires very different kit and techniques.

For your current setup, with an effective 1800mm focal length, I would suggest having a go at relatively compact and bright targets. At this time of year, M13 immediately springs to mind, along wih other globular clusters. M51 is also wonderful, but challenging with high focal length to aperture ratios. It's very rewarding, though, when you first image those spiral arms A scope such as a 200mm Newtonian will open up a huge number of possibilities.

[SmokeyJoe]

If you have laptop get yourself an xbox webcam and check out the mod for it. Dead simple. And the cams are cheap, I got two for under a tenner a couple of months ago. Good results for planets, and you can find the software you need free on the net. Good luck and enjoy.

Sent from my LT30p using Tapatalk 2