Jupiter afocal single shot, cheap filter eyepiece test

[Aussie Dave]

It's not often I do afocal on planetary. This was purely a test with two of the cheapest items you could buy from Ebay, an unbranded Moon and Sky Glow filter and a Celestron 10mm Kellner eyepiece. Tested in a Celestron Nexstar 8i SCT and captured with a Sony Cybershot 14mp DSC-W610 compact digital camera, handheld near the eyepiece, ISO 80, exposure -2.0, 8x zoom.

Visually looking at Jupiter the eyepiece has light scatter and some ghosting from the bright planet and bright smaller objects but when the Moon and Sky Glow filter is fitted the view becomes better, dropping the brightness of Jupiter and giving more contrast to the gas bands, the Great Red Spot and and polar region gas cloud area edges showing well. Also there was some fainter detail starting to show on the edge of the central bands and within them on those momentary seconds of good seeing. Editing the image was easier too with more natural colour showing in the original photo without the bright planet washing everything out when not using the filter. I was quite surprised really with the filter. The Kellner eyepiece I can't really complain about either considering it's price, I just don't know why they wouldn't fully multicoat them as I'm sure they would perform much better. I'll definitely be keeping the filter.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Excellent afocal shot!

[laudropb]

Very nice for afocal image Dave.