Advice for imaging Jupiter

[kroy]

HI Guys,

I am a little new to planet photography. I have a SW 200PDS with is correctly collimated  (checked tonight before taking it in the garden).

After reading the forum topics - I bought a 12 mp HD webcam last week and removed the lens from it.

I was pretty happy and decided to test this on Jupiter as my fav planet. 

The Jupiter was nice and sharp with its bands and moons when viewed from my telescope eyepiece but with the camera on it was just a bright disc. (screen shot of the video attached).

Can you please suggest what am I doing wrong here and what should I do to picture Jupiter !!

Any advice is highly appreciated. Thanks

[redmoo]

Hey! What software are you using to capture? I personally use Sharpcap, and with that, you can usually adjust the gain on the camera. Also, increasing the FPS usually lowers the brightness too.

Im not a planetary person, but someone will be along soon to give you proper advice as to the exact settings that you need!

Good luck

[kroy]

Thanks redmoo

My HP laptop was preloaded with youcam.... Since my webcam was plug and play so that's what I used ..

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[glowingturnip]

Sharpcap and Firecapture are software people often use, and both are free (I think)

you should be able to find an exposure control (equivalent to shutter speed on a regular camera) and a gain control (equivalent to ISO), reduce them both down until you get an acceptable image with no highlight clipping - check the histogram graph that should be in the software, you want all the graph to be in the middle and not truncated at either the left or right.

If you've got a night of good seeing (i.e the image is nice and stable and isn't swimming about) then you can go for slightly higher exposure and lower gain, but if the seeing is poor, go for the opposite.

[kroy]

That is an excellent advise.... thanks a lot

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