Jupiter and Saturn images with a DSLR?

[northcanadian]

Hello:

From what I have been reading, webcams and astroimagers are advised for planetary imaging. Is it possible though to get fairly decent images of Jupiter and Saturn with a DSLR? What would one have to do in order to achieve some degree of success?

I have a Pentax K20DSLR and a Celestron 9.25 SCT GOTO.

Have taken some reasonably decent lunar photos.

Thank you

[Kai]

It not to say that you cant but most people will use a high frame capture and stack the frames to get better definition .You just cant grab the frames quick enough with a DSLR.

[arad85]

What he said

[geoff_k]

Agree with that, although I have seen discussions elsewhere about using the later DSLRs which have Live View and/or HD movie capability.

Not sure how much if anything has been done in that area, but it would seem that there are possibilities. In terms of cost though, webcams give more than acceptable results.

Geoff

[EA2007]

It depends how much detail your after.

I have seen okay results with a dSLR. If your magnification is okay then you will see some divisions in Saturns rings and the medici's of Jupiter.

However, like I said, detail comes from the CCD's frames. If you image Jupiter with a single shot from a dSLR then all your likely to get is a large orangy-white blob with some specs around it that are the moons. Likewise for Saturn, an orange blob with the rings on the side.

The frames can be picked so that the most detailed are used to be processed and from this your resulting image will be significantly more detailed.

No harm in trying though, the moon is easy to get with a dSLR at prime focus.

[northcanadian]

Thanks for the information. My camera also has a burst mode...jpeg mode @1.6 MB. Wondering if that might be worth a try...then stacking?

Thanks again

[George]

There is a utility that enables you to grab live view frames from Canons, depending on your PC capibilities it gives a decent frame rate.

You can capture in AVI format and stack just like a webcam output, Ive played around taking lunar AVI's and their as good as a webcams, I was typicly getting 18-22 fps.

When Jupiter is better placed I'll give it a try.

[jgs001]

It's always worth a try as a challenge. The difficulty is with the small crop factor 1.6 of aps-c sensors compared to 8.5 of webcams and the basic DMK you have to seriously stack magnifacation to get any image scale. I tried Venus as an experiment with my 600mm fl scope and needed 20x of magnification from tc's and barlows to do it. Even then the image was very small.