How can I get better pictures of Jupiter?

[pblackwell]

Hi guys, 

I managed to get this picture last night using my Celesteon SCT 9.25, with an old Cannon Rebel camera which had a x2 Barlow attached and went into the diagonal.

Not sure what the expose time was but it was very short as longer exposure made it white with no orange band detail.

Just edited the image on my iPhone. No stacking nothing.

Can I expect much better pictures with my kit? If so how?

Many thanks

Paul

 

[Peter Drew]

I think the telescope (and you) are capable of better Jupiter images, the main limitation currently is the low position of Jupiter. A dedicated planetary camera would also be a benefit.

[pblackwell]

Hmm I hope so. The camera I have is very old about 15 years or so. I think I definitely need to invest in either a new camera or a proper Astro imaging camera...

[Craney]

Use this resource to see what you could potentially image..... 

https://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/

set solar system=Jupiter and telescope = C9.25. Remember to select  'imaging mode'  that will release a drop down menu of cameras. 

Pick one you have heard of and see what it does to the image.  Then dream about all the possibilities....

.....but yes, the low altitude of the planet makes life difficult in a few ways at the moment.

 

Sean.

[ecuador]

The issue is that you need to stack many, many images (several hundred at least) to get around the atmospheric turbulence, which you can't do by taking pictures. As I like to say, you have the best planetary telescope that doesn't break your back. But you will need a planetary camera - if your budget is under £200 and you want color, your best bet would be something like the Altair GPCAM2 IMX224. On a very low budget, a webcam can also do better than single shots with a DSLR. The other option (with quality between the webcam and the planetary as you can see here in a comparison of Saturn on the C9.25) is a Canon 550D or 600D which are the only DSLRs that have a video mode that does not lineskip & resize (making it useless for planetary imaging). Ah, if you tether a Canon with liveView, you can also record the 10x liveview zoom, which is also usable.

[ChrisEll]

That's nice for a single image. The trick is to take a 30-60 second movie of the planet and then stack in, say, Registax.

[michael8554]

http://www.astropix.com/html/i_astrop/eq_tests/canon_one_to_one_pixel_resolution.html

If your dslr has LiveView you might be able to take high quality avi,  see the list in the link.

 Michael 

[pblackwell]

I definitely need a new camera. Mine doesn't have live view or take video.

Any suggestion on a good Cannon? (I have the adapters for Cannon)

Or a dedicate camera for astrophotography perhaps.

Thanks all, hope you're enjoying the sun!

Paul

 

[Davey-T]

Not up to speed on the latest Canons but get one with a flip out rotating LCD and that supports "proper" one to one video in crop mode.

Failing that get a cheap dedicated CCD camera, you don't need anything too fancy for planets.

Dave

 

[david_taurus83]

Sorry to pipe in but i was thinking about doing this during the short summer nights. I have a ZWO ASI120 mono camera I use for guiding. Could this be used for planets? Would I need to use some RGB filters (cheap ones) and stack the individual colours together to get a colour image?

 

Thanks

[pblackwell]

1 hour ago, david_taurus83 said:

Sorry to pipe in but i was thinking about doing this during the short summer nights. I have a ZWO ASI120 mono camera I use for guiding. Could this be used for planets? Would I need to use some RGB filters (cheap ones) and stack the individual colours together to get a colour image?

 

Thanks

Hi David , what’s an RGB filter?

[david_taurus83]

3 hours ago, pblackwell said:

Hi David , what’s an RGB filter?

Red, green and blue filters to be used with a mono camera. I believe you take exposures with each filter and stack the images to produce a final colour image. I've not tried this method yet, only used a DSLR. However I was planning on using my guide camera for having a go at the moon and planets.

[ecuador]

15 hours ago, david_taurus83 said:

Sorry to pipe in but i was thinking about doing this during the short summer nights. I have a ZWO ASI120 mono camera I use for guiding. Could this be used for planets? Would I need to use some RGB filters (cheap ones) and stack the individual colours together to get a colour image?

 

Thanks

The ASI120mm is fine for planets. But if you want colour images you'd have to either shoot through RGB filters or get the colour from a lower quality colour photo (e.g. a from a DSLR) - if you make a layer with the colour image (exactly resized and rotated) above the mono in photoshop and select its blending mode as "colour" you should get a decent result even if the colour photo looks much worse.

[PeterCPC]

If you want to get good results you will need a high frame rate planetary camera. Something like an ASI224 or similar. My avatar was taken with the 224.

Peter