Jupiter & first go with Canon 450D - advice?

[imakebeer]

I posted recently about my initial planetary imaging attempts. I managed to get out again last night - after a brief bit of lunar work for focusing I moved on to Jupiter (unfortunately Saturn kept hiding in the clouds).

My setup is the same as before except I've got hold of a used Canon EOS 450D to use in place of my Nikon D5500 - although the Canon is older and lower resolution than the Nikon, my understanding is this should be/might be better due to having 1:1 pixel resolution??? Plus it means I can have the Nikon on a tripod and shoot some startrails while I'm busy telescoping 😂

SkyWatcher 900mm/70mm refractor; Canon ESO 450D; Svbony eyepiece projection adapter; 25mm eyepiece; BackyardEOS

I'm shooting 500-1000 frames in 5x zoom mode, same as the Nikon. One thing I noticed is the older Canon captures fewer frames per second than the Nikon.

I'm not expecting miracles with my setup. I certainly don't think it's better than before with the Nikon - different maybe but not conclusively better. When I look at it on my mobile I think I can see pixellation in the image - I'm not sure if this is caused by something I'm doing in Autostakkert or Registax, or if it's really there because the 450D has larger sensor pixels and overall lower res than my D5500???

If any of you experts have any ideas then I'd appreciate your suggestions - cheers! 👍🔭

[happy-kat]

Every night or even hour might be different seeing and atmospheric conditions, perhaps evaluate after several sessions. Why not try using prime focus.

 

 

[westmarch]

Mods, this might get better advice if it was moved to AP section. 
 

John

[johnturley]

14 hours ago, happy-kat said:

Every night or even hour might be different seeing and atmospheric conditions, perhaps evaluate after several sessions. Why not try using prime focus.

 

 

If imakebeer used prime focus with his SkyWatcher 900mm/70mm refractor and Canon EOS 450D, the image scale would be tiny, eyepiece projection is usually required with digital SLR's to get a decent image size on planets.

John 

Edited November 8, 2022 by johnturley

[imakebeer]

7 hours ago, westmarch said:

Mods, this might get better advice if it was moved to AP section. 

Oops, my bad, rookie mistake there - I thought I'd posted this in the Planetary Imaging forum rather than planetary observing 😳😁 Still, at least the folks here are friendly 😁👍  I suspect I'd have been hung, drawn and quartered by now had I commited such a faux pas on "another" forum 🤫😉😜

@Stu I wonder if you or another mod could bump this over to Planetary Imaging? 🙏

7 hours ago, johnturley said:

If imakebeer used prime focus with his SkyWatcher 900mm/70mm refractor and Canon EOS 450D, the image scale would be tiny, eyepiece projection is usually required with digital SLR's to get a decent image size on planets.

Spot on! In fact even Jupiter is pretty small until I go into 5x Zoom mode in BYE.

[Stu]

13 minutes ago, imakebeer said:

I wonder if you or another mod could bump this over to Planetary Imaging? 🙏

Done Sir 👍

[Freddie]

Nice image but I would ditch the eyepiece and pop in a 2x Barlow.

[imakebeer]

15 hours ago, Freddie said:

Nice image but I would ditch the eyepiece and pop in a 2x Barlow.

Can you elaborate on this @Freddie , why would you do this? What is it that's so bad about eyepieces, why are Barlows better?

From what I've read, the dogma is, yeah, use a Barlow. But...

I think I tried it a week or two ago - opportunities have been rather scarce lately, mind you!

Apart from being the right way up, I think the images were maybe slightly worse and certainly not significantly better. That could be down to seeing, or altitude of Jupiter at the time, or maybe my Barlow is rubbish...

The image in 5x live view mode was same size or similar...

I'm more than happy to try again when I get the chance, I'm just curious to understand why a Barlow should in theory be better?

Cheers! 👍

[johnturley]

44 minutes ago, imakebeer said:

Can you elaborate on this @Freddie , why would you do this? What is it that's so bad about eyepieces, why are Barlows better?

From what I've read, the dogma is, yeah, use a Barlow. But...

I think I tried it a week or two ago - opportunities have been rather scarce lately, mind you!

Apart from being the right way up, I think the images were maybe slightly worse and certainly not significantly better. That could be down to seeing, or altitude of Jupiter at the time, or maybe my Barlow is rubbish...

The image in 5x live view mode was same size or similar...

I'm more than happy to try again when I get the chance, I'm just curious to understand why a Barlow should in theory be better?

Cheers! 👍

I agree, there seems to be a general taboo these days against eyepiece projection, although it was quite commonly used before the advent of dedicated planetary cameras with their small sized sensors compared to DSLR's. 

There was a post on 'Cloudy Nights' recently where someone posted some quite good images using eyepiece projection with a Baader Mark IV 8-245 mm zoom eyepiece set at 8mm, and a Takahashi 100 DZ telescope. 

In my opinion the image size using a 2x Barlow with your setup, would have been too small to be able to obtain a decent array of alignment points in Registax or Autostakkert.

John 

Edited November 9, 2022 by johnturley