first try at astrophotography

[lionclaw]

These are my first shots of jupiter and venus taken with a canon 1100d with a 75-300mm lens. If anyone could offer tips on how to improve it would be great.

settings for the last 2 photos f/5.6, 0.5 sec exposure, ISO 400  (the first photo was f/5.6, 4 sec exposure, 1600 ISO)

I'm 17 so can't afford better equipment at the moment but I'm getting a telescope in a few weeks.

[Roysten]

Hi Lionclaw, good effort! No doubt people will chime in with good advice, was your camera moving or is the streaming the result of your exposure time? Either way sorting that out would give a clearer image I think.

[lionclaw]

Hi Lionclaw, good effort! No doubt people will chime in with good advice, was your camera moving or is the streaming the result of your exposure time? Either way sorting that out would give a clearer image 

the exposure time in the first photo I think, any shorter and the moons wouldn't be visible.

Also does anyone know what the blue-green smudge is in the first photo, I thought it could be a nebular but I'm just starting out so I'm not sure what they look like from earth.

[Altais]

Hey and welcome to the forum!

What telescope are you getting?

Imaging the planets at high magnification is hard without a mount that tracks the movement of the planets. This is a great effort! Until you recieve your telescope, I would suggest trying some widefield imaging with your camera on a tripod, using a short focal length on your lens and the longest possible exposure before the stars start to trail.

Good luck!

[toilandtrouble123]

Well done on getting detailing on the belts in your first try. Excellent first light to progress from. Look forward to seeing more. Nat xx

[Leveye]

That green in the first shot is a lens flare me thinks.

[lionclaw]

Hey and welcome to the forum!

What telescope are you getting?

Imaging the planets at high magnification is hard without a mount that tracks the movement of the planets. This is a great effort! Until you recieve your telescope, I would suggest trying some widefield imaging with your camera on a tripod, using a short focal length on your lens and the longest possible exposure before the stars start to trail.

Good luck!

I'm not sure exactly what it is, my dad is sending me one of his ones. I think it might be a Celestron. He is also sending a good spotting scope which he says can see the moons of jupiter.

This is one of my widefield shots.

[Mattdavies241184]

Lionclaw great shots!!! You will learn loads from this site the people on here are awsome!!! Everyone very welcoming and no question seems to be a silly one!!

[lionclaw]

Just taken some more photos. This is the best one of venus. The photos of jupiter wasn't as good because it's much harder to focus as its farther away  

[D4N]

Nice, get another 30 like that and stack them then you will start to see a really nice image forming.

Deep sky stacker is free and great for stacking the wide field shots.

There are plenty of free programs for planetary shots too, Registax, AS!2 and PiPP to name a few.

If your camera has a video mode you can try that on Jupiter.

Take a 2 min clip and use one of the programs I mentioned to stack the frames into a single image.

If you are trailing at 4 seconds reduce the exposure time and take more frames to compensate, stack these to get an image with no trails.

Great start I'm sure your hooked on imaging now

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[D4N]

Just taken some more photos. This is the best one of venus. The photos of jupiter wasn't as good because it's much harder to focus as its farther away

Hmm I'm afraid that one looks out of focus, Venus isn't round at the moment, it should look like a gibbous moon kind of oval shaped.

Focus can be very difficult but there are lots of tricks to help from software to something called a bahnitov or a y mask.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Altais]

I agree with D4N about stacking widefield images. You can for example frame a part of the milky way and get some rich star fields, maybe even some dust lanes. Use the shortest focal lengh you can to get the longest possible exposures without star trails, and experiment with different ISO settings. The 1100D is a great DSLR for astro imaging, and I find it can handle pretty high ISO values without too much noise.

[ecuador]

Eh, you haven't exactly gotten venus I'm afraid... I have no idea what you are shooting, it could be venus very out of focus? Are you actually trying to use auto-focus on planets? Otherwise I can't explain statements such as "I can't focus on Jupiter because it is further away". They are both at exactly the same "distance" (infinity) as far as your camera is concerned, focus manually until you get lights far away and bright stars as pinpoints (it should be just a tad before your lens' focus travel end), leave it at manual focus and shoot away. You are not supposed to refocus on every object, everything extraterrestrial is at the same focus point.

Now, the very first image looks the closest to getting it right, but you are overexposed it seems (if that was 4 sec, try something like 1) and also the camera was not properly stabilized. It has to be mounted on a tripod and use the timer function (where it shoots a few seconds after you press the button) to remove any chance of vibration.

If you want to see what a photo of Venus on a 300mm lens looks like: try this example.

[wxsatuser]

Well done on your first images.

Apart from the first image and the widefield one the others are out of focus.

What you are seeing in the other images is the defocused diffraction pattern of your lens.

[lionclaw]

Eh, you haven't exactly gotten venus I'm afraid... I have no idea what you are shooting, it could be venus very out of focus? Are you actually trying to use auto-focus on planets? Otherwise I can't explain statements such as "I can't focus on Jupiter because it is further away". They are both at exactly the same "distance" (infinity) as far as your camera is concerned, focus manually until you get lights far away and bright stars as pinpoints (it should be just a tad before your lens' focus travel end), leave it at manual focus and shoot away. You are not supposed to refocus on every object, everything extraterrestrial is at the same focus point.

Now, the very first image looks the closest to getting it right, but you are overexposed it seems (if that was 4 sec, try something like 1) and also the camera was not properly stabilized. It has to be mounted on a tripod and use the timer function (where it shoots a few seconds after you press the button) to remove any chance of vibration.

If you want to see what a photo of Venus on a 300mm lens looks like: try this example.

thanks for the tips, I've been manually focusing using liveview, jupiter was harder as it was smaller on the screen. I think I got some photos of venus in focus but it's a lot small and lower quality. I'll post a photo. I'm using a tripod with a remote shutter.

[ecuador]

thanks for the tips, I've been manually focusing using liveview, jupiter was harder as it was smaller on the screen. I think I got some photos of venus in focus but it's a lot small and lower quality. I'll post a photo. I'm using a tripod with a remote shutter.

The whole point of focusing is to get it as SMALL as possible. At 10x liveview it should still be tiny. What you are posting here is not the actual planet in focus. So, move your focus ring towards infinity and your planet will become smaller, then when you pass the focus point it will start to grow again. Go back and for slowly to get it at minimum size (and maximum brightness). You will never be able to photograph features on Venus, that is not possible even with relatively large telescopes in visible light, so don't worry about it.

[lionclaw]

The whole point of focusing is to get it as SMALL as possible. At 10x liveview it should still be tiny. What you are posting here is not the actual planet in focus. So, move your focus ring towards infinity and your planet will become smaller, then when you pass the focus point it will start to grow again. Go back and for slowly to get it at minimum size (and maximum brightness). You will never be able to photograph features on Venus, that is not possible even with relatively large telescopes in visible light, so don't worry about it.

Ok I think I know the point you're talking about. I'll get some more photos tonight