First go at planetary imaging

[JimothyC]

I’m just starting out with astronomy and astrophotography. I’ve been doing most of my observing from the south westish facing balcony of my flat. I only get about 90 degrees of the sky due to other buildings around me. But rather luckily that part of the sky has Jupiter, Saturn and Mars progress across it during the evening. So thought I’d have a go at capturing them.  I got myself a Skymax 127 Mak on an AZ-GTi mount and a ZWO ASI 178 MC and with the help of some longer cables I was able to run the whole show from my sofa. There’s not enough room for both me and the telescope on the balcony at the same time  

These are my first attempts at planetary imaging and I’m quite pleased with the results. But I’d like to improve, so any feedback on these would be great. I’ve tried with and without a Baader 2.25 Barlow, but just found it impossible to align things properly. So these are all just the scope and camera on their own. Images were stacked in Autostakkert 3 and processed a bit in registax wavelets area to try and bring out more detail. Jupiter was taken on 5 July and Saturn and Mars on 6 July  

I’m pretty pleased with Jupiter and Saturn. But Mars was just a red blob. I’m guessthing this is down to the global dust storm. But I was hoping to see some of the polar regions. 

Any feedback or pointers would be greatly appreciated. 

[tooth_dr]

I think I’ll be taking pointers from you. Well done. 

[Stargazer33]

First off these are very good results, especially from a balcony! If you download the program GIMP (freeware) you can play around with colour balance etc to bring out a more natural colour.

As you say with Mars, the global dust storm at present will be hiding any detail, possibly even the polar cap.

Finding a target with a 2.25x Barlow is quite a bit harder as your field of view is dramatically narrowed. Especially if you cannot get onto your balcony and use your finder scope to align properly. More expence I know but maybe you could attach a camera to your finder and after making sure it's properly aligned with your main scope you could use that.

[JimothyC]

Yep that's the next item my wallet will be taking a bashing from. At the moment I've only got a red dot finder and I don't have the room to get behind it to look down it. A digital finder scope would solve a lot of issues and if I could use the same setup for autoguiding my StarAdventuter mount as well, then all the better. My original plan was to image DSOs and the first telescope I purchased was a 70mm refractor, but I picked the wrong time of year for that endeavor. 

I've been looking at various finder scope and camera packages and this one seems like a possible candidate.  https://www.firstlightoptics.com/guide-cameras/sky-watcher-evoguide-50ed-guidescope-zwo-asi120mm-bundle.html or maybe https://www.firstlightoptics.com/guide-cameras/zwo-mini-finder-guider-asi120mm-bundle.html Unfortunately it's out of stock for at least a month and I'm a bit unsure if it will be suitable and worth waiting for. Will it give me a sufficiently wide and clear view of the sky to use as a finder, or is it really only for autoguiding?

I've got a copy of Photoshop (a benefit of my day job). So I'll have a play with the colour balance and see if can get a bit closer to the expected colours. What's causing this colour shift, is it something I can correct for when I'm capturing?

[newbie alert]

I think your mars is exceptional ..very nice..

[JimothyC]

I've reprocessed these and tweaked the colour balance in Photoshop to make them more in agreement with other images I've seen. Thanks for the pointers, I think I need to get off of the balcony and go somewhere the seeing might be a little better. I'm looking out over a carpark and rooftops after 30 degree temps during the day. Somewhere a little less wobbly is bound to help. 

 

 

[morimarty]

A very good set of images especially for the first time planetary imaging

[JimothyC]

Packed my telescope into the back of the car and headed off to a big common nearby. It's great having so much room to move around and such big open skies.. But it felt a bit odd hanging out in a field at night and there were a few suspect characters about so I didn't want to stick around for too long.  I did manage to grab some more captures of Jupiter and Saturn. The seeing was definitely better for Jupiter but Saturn was still to low on the horizon for much of an improvement. Jupiter had the added bonus of Europa popping into the top right of the image and I'm seeing a little bit more detail this time. I'd like to have another go with the barlow, perhaps later in the week. 

 

[cheryl simone]

Very nice first images well done!

[celestron8g8]

I agree , very nice captures for first time !! 

[Stu]

Excellent capture Jim. I love the one with Europa peeking out from behind the limb of Jupiter. The second set do seem to be better, seeing makes such a difference to planetary observing and imaging.

I’m expert on this at all (basically I’m visual), but have you looked at PIPP? Can be useful for preprocessing before stacking.

https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/