Getting better pictures

[healeddoughnut]

Hi all, hope you are well. May i ask for some advice/help as a novice to this amazing hobby. I have a Celestron Omni 150mm scope which my wife bought me for my birthday and i must say i have had a lot of fun with it so far, looking at things i could never imagine i would be able to see. Recently i have gotten into taking pics, mostly of the moon and some very bad ones of Saturn when i took my boy into the New Forest to witness the Super Moon a few weeks ago. As i said i also took some bad images of Saturn, and therein lies my problem. Whilst the pics of the Moon are good, (for me at least), how do i take better pictures or closer pictures of other planets such as Jupiter and Saturn etc? Is it the size of the scope i need to change, or the camera, i am using a Canon EOS1100. I would really appreciate any help or advice anyone can offer, thank you for your time and i hope this post is not too daft a question/request to be asking. Kind regards, Steve

[VigdisVZ]

Hi!

Rough outline from someone who's never done this first hand (but have buddies who do).

Planetary photography is usually done with a smaller sensor camera ( a big chip like your dslr dont benefit from extra pixels, you just record more noise that way ).

So imagine you have a small chip camera, like a webcam or something along those lines, fitted on top of a high magnification powermate/barlow, then you record a short video of a few thousand frames (this is where a motorized mount shines).

You load the video into a program like registax, play around with settings, get a sharper planetary image.

This technique is also good for taking closeups of the moon.

Hope this helps.

[Owmuchonomy]

Hi all, hope you are well. May i ask for some advice/help as a novice to this amazing hobby. I have a Celestron Omni 150mm scope which my wife bought me for my birthday and i must say i have had a lot of fun with it so far, looking at things i could never imagine i would be able to see. Recently i have gotten into taking pics, mostly of the moon and some very bad ones of Saturn when i took my boy into the New Forest to witness the Super Moon a few weeks ago. As i said i also took some bad images of Saturn, and therein lies my problem. Whilst the pics of the Moon are good, (for me at least), how do i take better pictures or closer pictures of other planets such as Jupiter and Saturn etc? Is it the size of the scope i need to change, or the camera, i am using a Canon EOS1100. I would really appreciate any help or advice anyone can offer, thank you for your time and i hope this post is not too daft a question/request to be asking. Kind regards, Steve

Hi Steve

Although it's a long thread, this SGL thread is perfect reading for your predicament.

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

Regarding focal length, for planetary the longer the better. For example my shots are taken with my 9.25" Celestron FL 2350mm.

Chris

[ronin]

Your scope will be half reasonable for the Moon but planet imaging is usually done with a long focal length Mak/SCT, it is also done with a webcam. You do not get an "image" as such, you take a video of the planet, then work on that.

Even with a Mak/SCT you may still drop a barlow in the get a bigger image.

So planetary imaging means a long focal length - you may need to drop a 3x barlow in or even a 5x and you will need to put a webcam in where the eyepiece goes - modified to remove the front lens. This therefore means a laptop to save the webcam file to and you need a tracking mount. I bet that has just increased to number of bits.

You get a video file (.avi) of about 2000 frames, you drop this into something like Registax, then you ahve to look through and select a "good" one, then tell Registax to select the best 25% that are closest to this "good" one and the stack these for a "compound" image. Yout then play with the Wavelets on the left hand side to improve the result.

Overly simplified maybe but for the wavelets move the sliders from the left to about the middle.      

Your DSLR is more suited to long exposure images (usually DSO orientated), and not so much to planetary.

Unless you want Saturn now it will be early next year when Jupiter makes a reappearance at evening time, so you could collect together the bits required and get used to everything.

I suppose that owing to the nature of planetary imaging it is often the realm of those that have a goto Mak/SCT, it does to an extent fall into something else to have a go at - a webcam is cheap and if you have a laptop then you have everything.

[glowingturnip]

I've got the Omni XLT 150 reflector - you don't say whether yours is a refractor or reflector, so maybe the same scope ?

I'm very pleased with it, and hope I'm getting a few decent results now, see my flickr link in my sig. 

As others say though, it's not great for planetary, the focal length is too short, especially with a DSLR.  I recently got a QHY5Liic (glorified webcam) which is giving much better moon close-ups, and through a barlow is ok for planets but still not great.

However, It is an ideal focal length for DSO's, expecially some of the larger nebulae, though you'd have to get an after-market synscan goto kit for it like I did, and figure out some way of guiding it (I have a cheap celestron T70 travelscope piggybacked on top and use the QHY as guide cam, using a DSLR to image)

[Leveye]

I found myself at that crossroads. I ended up getting a dedicated planetary scope. A 90's USA made Celestron C8 SCT. At 2032mm to start with before any other magnification if found it wonderful place to start. Imaging Saturn is finally within reach for me.  

[healeddoughnut]

Wow, thank you guys, you have really given me a lot to think about, I really appreciate all the advice. I shall keep you updated as to how I get on. Kindest regards, Steve