Astrophotography of Saturn and Jupiter - Help Needed

[Mikaellm1234]

Hi everybody

I am an amateur astrophotographer from Denmark, and  I want to photograph Jupiter and Saturn

I am good at visual observation and I have recently pictured the moon which was succesful (see image)

However, when I tried photographing Saturn, I had great trouble focusing the picture as well as right exposure time, ISO etc.

Picutre of the Moon that I have taken (all rights belong to me)

This is a list of my hardware:

HEQ5 SynTrek mount (equatorial mount)

Skywatcher Explorer 200PDS

Cannon EOS 5D

Skywatcher Coma Corrector 0,9x

2x Deluxe Barlow

Various adaptors for photography

I use my barlow together with the Coma Corrector when photographing

As I stated earlier, I want to photograph Saturn and Jupiter

My quesitons are:

1) What should the camera settings be? (Exposure, ISO etc.)

2) Techniques for focusing correctly

3) Techniques to edit photograhs in Photoshop

I am looking forward to your answers!

Clear skies,

Mikael

[Owmuchonomy]

Follow this thread. It tells you everything you need to know.

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/208610-planetary-imaging-with-dslr-video-mode/

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Nice crisp Moon image.

For planetary the key is to take a very large number of frames and stack them, to compensate for the distortion caused by atmospheric turbulence. If you have a laptop the best way to go is to plug your camera into it via USB and use either APT or Backyard EOS to control it. Both are quite cheap, especially APT.  Using planetary mode and zoom allows shooting at a far higher frame rate than the camera can manage. They also have focussing aids although I haven't used them myself.

Exposure wise, planets are bright being directly lit by the Sun so you want a fairly low ISO to reduce noise and a short exposure so that the swirling atmosphere doesn't smear each frame. Think daylight settings but allow for the f-number, your scope is effectively f10 with the 2x barlow fitted.

I've only had one go at planetary imaging with a DSLR (my 1100D), using APT and a 12" newtonian with 4x barlow. This is what the best single frame out of 1,000 looked like:

Note the red tinge at the top and the blue at the bottom, this is because the atmosphere refracts the different colours like a prism. Fortunately an RGB align in Registax can compensate for this.

However, most frames looked more like this due to turbulence:

Stacking the best 10% of 1,000 frames in Registax (free software) and heavy use of the wavelets functions gave this:

If you can't use a laptop the best way to go is to use the video functions and zoom on the camera. Focussing is tricky, ideally you'd want to focus on a star first using a bahtinov mask.

Hope that is some help, and good luck.

[Mikaellm1234]

Thanks for your answers.

I cannot zoom on the camera when using my telescope since I am mounting it with T-adaptors, there is no ordinary camera lense

Are you saying that the programs will work with a DSLR?

BTW, nice picture

I am quite bad at recognizing planets, is that Mars or Jupiter?

[Mikaellm1234]

Also, which of the two programs do you consider the best?

[Knight of Clear Skies]

That would be Mars.

Yes, APT and Backyard EOS are used to control the camera. When I say zoom, I mean either within the viewing window of those programs or on the liveview of the camera if your model of EOS 5D has it (I believe it was introduced on the mkII, what do you have please?). Actually, that's one thing I'm not sure about I'm afraid - can you use APT/BYE in planetary mode on cameras that don't support liveview? That could be a problem if you have a mk 1.

[Mikaellm1234]

I do not have the camera at the moment, so I cannot really tell. Are you basically saying that I will be able to use liveview if the camera is mkii, otherwise the features of the program will be unusable?

[catman161]

If you want to get into planetary photography you will get much better results using a dedicated planetary camera or webcam. I use the ASI120MC by ZWO. To get the planetary scale bigger you would also add in a Barlow or powermate. I use a 4x powermate. The Philips SPC900 or SPC880 webcams are very good starter cameras to get into planetary Astrophotography. I used an SPC900 before the ASI120MC.

I capture the footage using sharpcap 2 and then stack it with Autostakkert! 2. I then out the resulting .tiff file that is produced by Autostakkert! 2 into registax and use the wavelets to sharpen a little. Then finally I out the sharpened image into Photoshop and use adjustment layers to balance colour, levels, curves etc.

Below image of Mars was captured with an ASI120MC, televue 4x powermate, on a Skywatcher 200P and NEQ6 Pro Mount. It's the best 6000 frames of 10,000 captured.

All rights belong to me

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Knight of Clear Skies]

I do not have the camera at the moment, so I cannot really tell. Are you basically saying that I will be able to use liveview if the camera is mkii, otherwise the features of the program will be unusable?

I'm not certain but I suspect so, I believe they take their image feed off the liveview. There is a free demo of APT, so you could always download it and try it.

If you want to get into planetary photography you will get much better results using a dedicated planetary camera or webcam.

Very nice Mars, much sharper detail with 6,000 frames rather than the 100 I stacked. Certainly a webcam will give better results for planetary but it's well worth trying DSLRs if people already have them. It's possible to get decent results and it involves learning the same capturing and processing skills, so if people want to upgrade later they haven't wasted their time.

[stargazerslivingroom]

I notice two of the replies make mention of selecting only a part of the total capture...10% in one and 60% in the other. That seems quite a difference to me. Do you let the stacking software decide or is it done by eye, viewing the individual images?

I feel this is where my problem lies...My good data is getting swamped by bad and I don't really know how to separate them.

Hope this isn't hijacking the thread...I feel the OP would also benefit from any answer.

I also think the comment about live view being required for planetary mode is correct.

Steve

[Knight of Clear Skies]

I notice two of the replies make mention of selecting only a part of the total capture...10% in one and 60% in the other. That seems quite a difference to me. Do you let the stacking software decide or is it done by eye, viewing the individual images?

That's a good question, hopefully an experienced planetary imager can weigh in on this. In the case of my Mars run most of my individual frames were featureless mush, so I decided to stack only 10%. I don't know whether that was a good decision or not. It's something I intend to experiment more with when I can find the time.

[Mikaellm1234]

Alright, I tested BackyardEOS and APT with my Cannon EOS 40D

Everything worked, will it do the same with my 5D?

[stargazerslivingroom]

On the BYEOS site is a list of all compatible Canon models and what features are available. I'll see if I can do a link...http://www.backyardeos.com/product_backyardeos.aspx

From the BYEOS home page click Product tab at top and then Camera Support Grid at bottom of resulting page.

Steve

[catman161]

I notice two of the replies make mention of selecting only a part of the total capture...10% in one and 60% in the other. That seems quite a difference to me. Do you let the stacking software decide or is it done by eye, viewing the individual images?

I feel this is where my problem lies...My good data is getting swamped by bad and I don't really know how to separate them.

Hope this isn't hijacking the thread...I feel the OP would also benefit from any answer.

I also think the comment about live view being required for planetary mode is correct.

Steve

That's the beauty of AS!2 stacking software is that it analyses all your frames captured and displays a quality curve graph. By looking at the graph you can select the percentage of frames you wish it to stack based on the quality of your capture.