Does it make sense to invest in planetary imaging equipment this year with the planets so low in the sky?

[ONIKKINEN]

On my latitude Jupiter will be at 18 degrees and Saturn at 10-11 this season. I had my first quick try at video lucky imaging on Jupiter and while its not great i can certainly recognize it as the planet (attached pic). I got this dawn/twilight when the skies were still very bright, not that it matters with Jupiter being so bright right?

I am running an OOUK VX8 with a 2.5x barlow and a Canon EOS 550D. The 550D is workable in the way that it can capture at "movie crop mode" which is a 640x480p 50fps uninterpolated sensor crop (just the center pixels of the sensor) but obviously it is not all that great QE and noise-wise. The 2.5x barlow is less than ideal for sure too, i think a 4x or 5x would be more optimal. I am not a stranger to general long exposure stuff but planets i haven't gotten to yet. The fast newtonian is also not ideal but should be workable, i hope.

 

Lets say i buy an ADC and a 4-5x barlow and maybe even a planetary camera with smaller pixels. Is it fighting a losing fight that i could just try another year or would i be getting reasonable improvements? I do have better uses for money too but seeing Jupiter just got me anxious to improve.

120s video at 50fps, stacked 10% best, some sharpening etc.

It looks quite soft, focusing was difficult since there were no stars i could bahtinov mask focus on (too bright). Focusing on the target is guesswork with the low resolution un-zoomable video live view, but focus is definitely improvable by luck and repetition if nothing else.

[JamesF]

I think it's going to be very hard to get good images of Saturn and Jupiter until they're higher in the sky and if you have better uses for the money then they'd almost certainly be better uses for the money

Used equipment that is mostly for planetary imaging might be cheaper at the moment though, because fewer people (in the northern hemisphere at least) are looking to buy it, so there may be some bargains to be had if you don't might spending the money and not using the gear very much until the planets are better placed.

James

[CraigT82]

Having a low altitude target in itself doesn't preclude you from getting nice images. Have a look at the image below by Jean Luc Dauvergne. Jupiter captured at 19 degrees last year from central Paris using a 10" scope. Jean Luc images from the balcony of his high rise apartment and this allows him to get up above a lot of the ground level thermal effects, which really kills detail. 

If you are mobile and can get somewhere up high on a hilltop or somewhere where you're shooting over low thermally radiative ground materials (green fields are good) then you can really minimise the effect of the low altitude targets and get nicely improved images with the kit you already have. 

I appreciate the might not be possible for you (it certainly isn't for me, I can only shoot form my back or front garden and that's it). But something to think about maybe. 

[ONIKKINEN]

6 hours ago, CraigT82 said:

If you are mobile and can get somewhere up high on a hilltop or somewhere where you're shooting over low thermally radiative ground materials (green fields are good) then you can really minimise the effect of the low altitude targets and get nicely improved images with the kit you already have. 

I appreciate the might not be possible for you (it certainly isn't for me, I can only shoot form my back or front garden and that's it). But something to think about maybe. 

 

Its definitely possible, in fact the opposite is impossible as i have no place at home to put down a telescope and see anything other than concrete or city lights.

Fields i can find left and right, hills maybe not so much even if i wanted to carry my kit up a hill. What about lakes/the ocean, would evaporation from a body of water be better or worse than ground thermals?

My telescope is certainly not a mewlon but seeing that an image like that is even technically possible at low altitudes is crazy.

[CraigT82]

21 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

Its definitely possible, in fact the opposite is impossible as i have no place at home to put down a telescope and see anything other than concrete or city lights.

Fields i can find left and right, hills maybe not so much even if i wanted to carry my kit up a hill. What about lakes/the ocean, would evaporation from a body of water be better or worse than ground thermals?

My telescope is certainly not a mewlon but seeing that an image like that is even technically possible at low altitudes is crazy.

Yeah I think shooting over the sea should be better in theory. The best atmospheric conditions tend to arise due to laminar airflow, which is what you tend to get as air moves over the flat sea before it becomes turbulent as it hits land and is forced over hills etc. The thermally radiative properties of the body water is relatively uniform too so that can reduce the negative effects from rising thermals that you get when shooting over land.

The windy.com app is great for looking at atmospheric forecasts, you can check what the jetstream is doing but also see what the lower prevailing winds are doing too.