Thinking of playing around with imaging Jupiter and Saturn with an XT8 and ASI120mm.

[MKHACHFE]

Hi all,

As the subject says, I'm thinking about asking the to borrow my old XT8 this weekend (from the friend I sold it to last year), in order to attempt imaging Jupiter and Saturn with my ASI120mm mono.

I am not after stunning results, or pictures I can print, or anything close to perfect results.i just want to play and learn and get a final result where I can, hopefully, see a bit of cloud and red dot detail.

I guess my first question is will I need any adapter to attach the camera to the scope.
Will my X2 Barlow be of any use?

Keeping in mind that I'm really only looking to play around in an area of AP that I have zero experience in and that I will be happy with any relatively decent final result... should I bother?

If I need to buy anything, hopefully I can get it by the weekend.

Thanks for reading.
 

[MKHACHFE]

Edit: doing more Google and YouTube research, it seems like it's definitely possible to get decent results with my setup and that includes using the Barlow.

So I guess unless anyone has some advice to offer, my questions have been answered.

I should have googled before posting. Sorry all.

I would still love to hear from anyone who has advice to give or any experience to show share.

Cheers

[happy-kat]

I'd get familiar with the software you choose to drive the camera before the weekend. SharpCap, Firecapture etc. The ZWO120 in theory would already have come with at least a T mount (nose cone) or a T2 thread to connect directly to a suitable receiver on the telescope, though I don't know specifically for the telescope you'll be using.

[vlaiv]

Don't really know if you are going to get any results since you have no experience in planetary imaging.

Problem with said scope is that it does not track, unless you plan on taking it of the dob mount and putting it on very large EQ mount. Alternative to that is to put it on EQ platform.

In principle, you should take your ASI120, put it in x2.5 barlow (x2 will work fine as well), take video of about 3 minutes at highest frame rate that you can achieve (that means using 640x480 ROI instead of full 1280x1024 or what the resolution of ASI120 is) of 5-6ms exposures and then stack it and process it. Set gain fairly high. It would be good to take calibration videos as well - maybe just "dark" video if you can (which is short video with same settings as capture video - except scope covered).

Problem is tracking. If you don't have tracking - well Jupiter will zoom thru your FOV in matter of seconds if you manage to get it aligned in the first place (you are trying to align things by hand with about one arc minute precision)

[Pete Presland]

As @vlaiv has mentioned, the problem is going to  be keeping the object on the chip. Hand tracking is tricky enough on an un-motorised EQ mount, i would imagine it is very tricking on a Dob mount. Even at the native focal length 1200mm, its going to travel through the field of view pretty quickly.

The OTA and camera are more than capable of producing some fine images, in the right seeing conditions though.

[MKHACHFE]

Hi all,

I finally got a chance last night to play around and I thought I would share my initial results.

Bear in mind I only took about 2 mins of total frames and that this test image is only about a tenth of the frames I took, maybe much less. I'll stack all of them tomorrow.

Still, considering the tiny number of frames and that it's my first every attempt at planetary imaging, I'm pretty pleased.

Only up to go from here!

ASI120mmc

XT8

Stabilised in after effects then stacked in Autostakkert, then fooled around with it in registax and lightroom.

Thanks again for everyone's help and advice.

 

 

[MKHACHFE]

And Saturn from last night. Not as good as I was hoping. But I'm sure I will improve.

 

Cheers

[MKHACHFE]

Oh, and a close up of the moon