First Planetary Image Ever!

[Sunshine]

A glorious night with a gas giant, such was my session last night, i could not have asked for better seeing and the temperature was a comfy 19 degrees C, from the minute i brought out my 150 SW Mak and popped in the ES 14mm,i knew it would be a successful session.

Jupiter revealed itself at the eyepiece in glorious detail, i counted no less than 5 bands, and (8) of its moons?? could it be?? speckled here and there, it was a sight to see i must say.

It was the first time i saw any planet through my Mak, and boy did it deliver, clean crisp detail i haven't had the pleasure of seeing before, the GRS was clearly visible and cloud bands revealed detail within them i have rarely seen.

Realizing it was a great night, i figured i would attempt a shot with my Neximage 5 which is new, imaging to me is new for that matter, so my hopes were not high to say the least, i was a little frightened of completely failing and loosing my urge to take up imaging.

Tonight though, the stars aligned and i was able to take an image of Jupiter i can say i am proud of, not because it is a particularly great shot (i am a realist) but it is my first planetary shot, and second attempt at imaging anything period!.

 

I started by doing a semi rough and hurried alignment to polaris on the GP mount using the polar scope and my polar align App, which i have to say was practically dead on as Jupiter remained almost dead centre for the entire hour long which blew me away, lucky.  

Once i confirmed alignment, i popped in the camera, and fiddled here and there to find jupiter, focus was a challenge to say the least, my Mak has the factory focuser which i can focus perfectly visually, but staring at a monitor at night while focussing is another beast all together.

I took several videos at different resolutions and setting so i could see the differences after, i picked the one which stacked and aligned best with highest Res possible and used it in Registax, a new animal to me, but i am getting there. Once i saved the image in Registax, i tried to play with it further in Adobe with little success so i stopped playing god with jupiter and decided i would be happy with my first image of a planet!.

advice and tips for a noobie like me is gold so don't be shy!.

My focus is off i do realize that.

[Chris]

Looks good to me, I don't think your focus is too far out, but you could buy or make a focus mask to get it 100% 

[David Smith]

Sounds like you had a great night and a good image to cap it off. I was watching Jupiter visually last night until about 11pm, some nice steady view later in the session.

[geoflewis]

A great report and an excellent first image. I don't think your focus looks off, at least not by much, if at all. I find that focussing on the planets for imaging is one of the hardest tricks to accomplish as the 'sweet spot' keeps changing with changes in atmospheric seeing, hence the benefit of lucky imaging. Try using one of the moons for focusing, if you're not already doing that. Good luck. Geof

[Ronclarke]

I think that's a great first effort, well done..

Ron

[Sunshine]

Thanks to all!

[cjdawson]

The only piece of advice that I can offer here is that you might want to try adding a barlow lens to your imaging train.  The effect is that Jupiter will be double the size, but you'll be pushing the resolving power of the scope.   I know when I did it, I ended up with a bigger but less crisp image.  It didn't matter though, as taking the video, aligning and stacking seemed to sort that out.

[Demonperformer]

8 of it's moons??!!

I'm sorry, but I don't buy that. Faint stars possibly...

[Sunshine]

11 hours ago, Demonperformer said:

8 of it's moons??!!

I struggled to determine whether i was seeing dim stars or moons, besides the galilean 4 i did see an additional 4 tiny pin points of slightly varying magnitude but identical in colour, using averted vision they became more evident.

i am not used to ever seeing more than just 4, but, that night i counted 8, whether the others were stars or not i have no idea, i understand the difference in size and proximity between the galilean moons and the rest.

That night though i was struck by the fact that i was seeing 8 all together, brighter 4 and others were same colour but dimmer, tiniest of pin points, i get you cannot buy because i could either but im not selling it, i was as confused as you!

Hmm, after doing some research on the magnitude drop-off between gallilean moons and all others i realize i may have seen 5 at most, conditions were optimal and my eyes are sharp, but theres now way i could have seen moons down to 18th mag or less. 

must have been dim stars for sure!

[Davey-T]

Could have been hot pixels.

Dave

[Sunshine]

19 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

Could have been hot pixels.

lol, ocular hot pixels, I wish I could have recorder exactly what my eyes were seeing, I shook my head several times and wondered, I wasn't sure if it was possible to see more than 4, but seeing was so exceptional that night I thought "Maybe" I am sure that others must have seen more than 4 but with much more aperture than my 150.

[Girders]

Sunshine posted in my "Six months in" thread:

 "And if it will reassure you, ive been in the hobby for two decades and am just now imaging for the first time, you beat me to imaging jupiter, i will be looking to do that tonight, so score one for you sir! love the images!"

Well, that was worth the wait!  If it takes me two decades to turn my blurry little striped dot into something close to your image, I'll be more than happy with that!  Well done!

[Sunshine]

1 hour ago, Girders said:

Well, that was worth the wait!  If it takes me two decades to turn my blurry little striped dot into something close to your image, I'll be more than happy with that!  Well done!

Thank you my friend, we are both just beginning to wet our feet in imaging, I had a lucky night with exceptional seeing and was plain lucky on my aligning, time will tell if I can repeat that again lol. Leaning how to manage the accompanying software is a bit of a hair ball and definitely sucks the fun out of astronomy, just like the putrid cough medicine mom force feeds you then says "it will make you better" thank you sir, we both must keep at it and learn from others here on SGL, both our images will be better with time.

[Demonperformer]

I think my comment was a little more abrupt than I intended and I apologise for that.

I have attached a screenprint of Jupiter in the sky as at the time of your post, so things would have been slightly different earlier, but it will give you an idea. The 4 galileans are 2 to the left, one starting transit and one way over to the right, all in more or less a straight line. The three tiny dots closer in to Jupiter are three moons (from 14th to 19th magnitude), all the other white dots are stars down to 12th magnitude, which will probably be about the limit of a 6" scope under good conditions. [The red spots are faint galaxies, which you can discount.]

Do you have one of the planetarium programs (Cartes du Ciel & Stellarium are both free)? A quick sketch at the eyepiece (I just use x's to mark relative positions) and then compare with the software will quickly confirm exactly which objects you saw.

[Stu]

That’s an excellent first image sunshine, really very good. I would agree that focus is actually pretty close, the techniques offered by other posters will, I’m sure help you get it better next time.

@Demonperformer is correct in that you were seeing the four Galilean moons and four background stars. The next brightest moon is something like mag 14 and extremely difficult to see near a bright planet. Don’t worry though, plenty of people make the same ‘mistake’, myself included I’m sure in the past  

[JohnSadlerAstro]

Wow.

The views you people get through maks and cats. ? I have never seen the GRS, or indeed any detail other than 2 cloud bands. They are probably there, but I just cant get the magnification to see em lol! 

(Although, to be honest, a 130P-DS isn't exactly optimised for planetary work! )

John

[Sunshine]

18 hours ago, Demonperformer said:

I have attached a screenprint of Jupiter in the sky as at the time of your post

May i ask what program you used for that screen print? thank you! i am looking to get a good sky atlas program for my new laptop.

[Sunshine]

15 hours ago, JohnSadlerAstro said:

The views you people get through maks and cats. ? I have never seen the GRS, or indeed any detail other than 2 cloud bands. They are probably there, but I just cant get the magnification to see em lol! 

which scope are you using? with most objects magnification is actually detrimental to seeing detail, as long as you are within the limitations of your scope and seeing conditions.

You're pretty much at the mercy of the atmosphere when dialling up the magnification, it will determine how much you can use, dialling down the power often reveals more.

[Demonperformer]

5 hours ago, Sunshine said:

May i ask what program you used for that screen print? thank you! i am looking to get a good sky atlas program for my new laptop.

For this screenprint, I used Cartes du ciel (CdC). The other popular one on this site is stellarium. There is a lot of "friendly" rivalry between people on SGL who (obsessively?) prefer one or the other. The truth is, they both do the job and either will be good for you. I actually have both installed because each has its strengths and weaknesses. For general use, I prefer CdC, but that is just my preference.

They are both free, so I would suggest that you install both, try them out and see which you prefer, rather than relying on individual recommendations from SGL members.  Which is not to say that any problems with either cannot be asked and will be answered on SGL - just watch out for all the "use stellarium" responses to a CdC question thread and visa versa.

[JohnSadlerAstro]

8 hours ago, Sunshine said:

which scope are you using? with most objects magnification is actually detrimental to seeing detail, as long as you are within the limitations of your scope and seeing conditions.

You're pretty much at the mercy of the atmosphere when dialling up the magnification, it will determine how much you can use, dialling down the power often reveals more. 

I'm using a 130P-DS, which is 130mm f5 (650mm length).  

John

[Sunshine]

In retrospect, I realized I overcooked the image in Registax, overdone.