Jump to content

SkySurveyBanner.jpg.21855908fce40597655603b6c9af720d.jpg

Suitable camera for planetary


Recommended Posts

I’m trying to decide which sort of camera setup to look at. I’m currently using a Skymax-127 and looking for a suitable camera for capturing some images of the planets/moon.

I can’t remember if it was on here or another site somewhere, but I saw one comment that with something like the 127, I should look for a camera with a relatively small image sensor - as the image from this scope would then be able to fill the chip and result in larger pictures without cropping/zooming. However I now can’t find that page/comment - so looking for some advice on that!

I had been looking at an ASI 120MC or ASI 224MC - if anyone has any thoughts/experience/advice on this I’d love to hear.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The 224mc is a great cam, though one with a very low resolution so your images won't be large in scale. Haven't tried the moon with it but for planets it's good, my sig pic is taken with this but low quality due to 360mm FL and 2x Barlow.

For long exposures you really can't push more than 30s per sub as the noise and amp glow start to swamp the sensor frame, if you ever want to do planetary nebulae. Also works well as a guide camera though not as sensitive as a mono.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Matt

I also use the 224MC. It must be easy to use as I have had some good results and I am very new to planetary photography. (There are much more experienced people here to advise you however 😁)

I always use an IR cut filter with it.

Best of luck with what ever you do, there is loads of information, help and support here.

cheers

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just a suggestion, but uncooled cameras are best for bright things, daylight imaging is what the market is for the manufacturers of the chips. The astronomy community has bright targets, planets, the moon, bright stars, etc. When the camera is cooled, new possibles exist: faint things. In astronomy more things are faint than bright, and cooled cameras have a distinct advantage. The coolers are all programmable, and can be turned off- leaving the camera in the "simple" case.

The chip manufacturers big market is consumer photography, so the chips are designed for that purpose, then a few specialty shops use these chips that are already being made in large quantities, and put them into packages with TMounts and USB, for astronomy, often adding a cooler to improve the cameras for the needs of astronomers. One byproduct of this mass market product is almost all chips are manufactured with color filters on them (Bayer filters).

Unless you understand what you are doing with the spectrum, using more than one filter at a time is usually a bad idea. Since one filter is already installed on color cameras, that means putting another one on is more likely to just reduce the camera sensitivity than do anything useful. So.. if possible get a monochrome camera. The good news is there is no filter police running around checking to see if folks have more than one filter installed. But imagine that a dozen filters were used at once, very very little light would get through! Just one filter with very very few exceptions. So, one other advantage to a monochrome camera is they are about 4x more sensitive because the Bayer filters lose 3/4 of the light!

To sum up my suggestions, get a monochrome cooled camera if you possibly can. Then get external R/G/B filters, and you have color when you want it and sensitivity when you want that. An inexpensive uncooled color camera does get you started for less cash, and I understand that motive completely.

The only caveat to my suggestion is color cameras work better things that move very fast- the one place in astronomy where they have value is "lucky imaging" where a huge number of photos of a planet are taken very very quickly, then the best parts of each image are stitched together to make images that look like they were taken with Hubble telescope. If that is the path you want to take, go color, but go cooled so you get less noise.

:)

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All I'll add is that the planets are small targets, whereas the Moon (as a whole)  is a large target, albeit that individual craters are small. So whether you want a small sensor may depend on what scale you're aiming to capture on the moon.

 

Edited by Gfamily
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Both the 120 and 224 are very decent cameras to be getting started with. They have the same sized pixels and same sized sensor but the 224 is more sensitive and has less read noise, so I’d go with that one if your funds will allow. 
 

When using a colour camera you will also need to budget for a UV/IR cut filter to go on the nose. 
 

If you do decide on the 120 try and get the 120MC-S which is the USB3 version and is capable of faster frame rates than the older USB2 version.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Matt S said:

I’m trying to decide which sort of camera setup to look at

If £249 isn't too much, then I would look at the QHY5III462C with expansion kit; has all the filters you need in the box. It also makes an excellent guide camera as it is very sensitive. I am very happy with mine 😀 In any event I think you would also need to use a barlow with any of the cameras.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, Varavall said:

If £249 isn't too much, then I would look at the QHY5III462C with expansion kit; has all the filters you need in the box. It also makes an excellent guide camera as it is very sensitive. I am very happy with mine 😀 In any event I think you would also need to use a barlow with any of the cameras.

I’ll second that… the QHY462c is a fantastic planetary camera. I captured the Jupiter and Saturn images in my signature with one. Well worth considering.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, Gfamily said:

All I'll add is that the planets are small targets, whereas the Moon (as a whole)  is a large target, albeit that individual craters are small. So whether you want a small sensor may depend on what scale you're aiming to capture on the moon.

That’s a good point - I’d not considered this. I currently just have a DSLR which I’ve been playing with (although my scope / mount / equipment are a limiting factor for doing longer exposure shots / big / faint objects). I’ve been doing some lunar shots with this and can just fit the moon in, it doesn’t provide me with any good video / high shot rates for lucky imaging though. 

My main objective with this is to collect some imagery of the planets, moon and maybe some of the smaller DSOs like the ring nebula (although I’m experimenting with my DSLR for that).

I’d like to do some quite detailed shots of the moon - but I’m still trying to figure out how to go about that  

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Varavall said:

If £249 isn't too much, then I would look at the QHY5III462C with expansion kit

Thanks - I’d not considered these (didn’t know much about them). I can stretch to £250, I am trying to keep the budget down though. 
My plan was to run things from a Raspberry Pi 4 / Astroberry for cheapness, but After doing some reading I’m unsure if I’ll actually limit my frame rate by going that route.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I purchased an a ZWO ASI 462 MC, which is supposed to be an improved version of the 224 MC (I assume that it utilises the same Sony chip as the QHY5III462C).

My first results on Jupiter were not that successful, as the image scale was far too small, and I couldn't enlarge it sufficiently in processing (see attached image). I tried eyepiece projection, but the results were not that great, however have recently purchased a Tele Vue 5x Powermate, with which I am hoping to get better results. 

Jupiter with Io shaow transit 29.08.21..bmp

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, johnturley said:

My first results on Jupiter were not that successful, as the image scale was far too small, and I couldn't enlarge it sufficiently in processing (see attached image). I tried eyepiece projection, but the results were not that great, however have recently purchased a Tele Vue 5x Powermate, with which I am hoping to get better results.

Yes, the image is small, but what exactly did you do? Which of the telescopes in your signature did you use?  Did you take a one-shot, or a video for 'lucky image' processing?  Did you use the whole chip, or confine the region of interest? There is no point in using bandwidth to record a lot of black sky.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

Yes, the image is small, but what exactly did you do? Which of the telescopes in your signature did you use?  Did you take a one-shot, or a video for 'lucky image' processing?  Did you use the whole chip, or confine the region of interest? There is no point in using bandwidth to record a lot of black sky.

The image was taken through my Esprit 150, as due to the position of the eyepiece, I can't readily couple up a CMOS camera and laptop to the 14 in (would need a very long USB cable).

The image I have posted showing the shadow of Io was taken from a video, with the images stacked and processed in Registax, I may also have done a bit of fine tuning with Adobe Lightroom.

I wasn't aware that you can just use a region of interest rather than the whole chip with the ZWO camera, I will have to look into that, the instructions that came with it (actually only available online) were pretty rubbish.

John 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wasn't aware that you can just use a region of interest rather than the whole chip with the ZWO camera, I will have to look into that, the instructions that came with it (actually only available online) were pretty rubbish.

If you are using Sharpcap 4, the ROI settings are in a menu to the right of the screen.  I use 320x240 on Jupiter, but with smaller pixels you may go for 480x480 or whatever your camera offers.

You may find that your C9.25 CPC is the best scope for planetary imaging. (You do not need an equatorial mount). Your 14" may not offer any practical advantage in British seeing conditions even if you get a cable to reach.   

Best focal ratio is said to be around f20 (including Barlow or Powermate) but in typical seeing f10 is enough.

Did you use an IR-cut filter with the ASI462MC, to get a correct colour balance?  It has a massive IR response, and I encourage you to get an IR-pass filter in addition and try that as well, shooting an IR image.  (With an ASI224MC this works well on Saturn and Mars).

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

 

If you are using Sharpcap 4, the ROI settings are in a menu to the right of the screen.  I use 320x240 on Jupiter, but with smaller pixels you may go for 480x480 or whatever your camera offers.

You may find that your C9.25 CPC is the best scope for planetary imaging. (You do not need an equatorial mount). Your 14" may not offer any practical advantage in British seeing conditions even if you get a cable to reach.   

Best focal ratio is said to be around f20 (including Barlow or Powermate) but in typical seeing f10 is enough.

Did you use an IR-cut filter with the ASI462MC, to get a correct colour balance?  It has a massive IR response, and I encourage you to get an IR-pass filter in addition and try that as well, shooting an IR image.  (With an ASI224MC this works well on Saturn and Mars).

I do have Sharpcap (and have recently downloaded the 4.0 version), as I find it more user friendly than the ZWO ASi software.

I will probably do most of my planetary imaging with the Esprit 150 for the following reasons:-

1. It is situated in my observatory shed, piggybacked on the fork mounted 14 in Newtonian, and there is a convenient shelf on which I can place my laptop when imaging.

2. The Esprit gives sharper planetary images most of the time than the 14in Newtonian, only under very good viewing conditions can it equal or exceed the Esprit regarding planetary images.

3. I have the Esprit and Newtonian almost perfectly aligned with each other, so I can connect up the ZWO camera to the Esprit, and then use the Newtonian to position the image through the Esprit onto the laptop screen, which saves a lot of time. 

4. With the focusing mount of the Esprit being situated close to the forks of the equatorial mount, the position does not vary a lot with altitude and azimuth when it is pointing in a south-east, south, or south-west direction, unlike if it was mounted on a German equatorial mount.

I do have a Baader Neodymium (IR cut) filter, although I haven't tried it for planetary imaging so far (just used it for visual) so maybe I should give it a try.

John 

Edited by johnturley
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue. By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.