another stupid question

[rowan46]

you may guess from this question that i know little to nothing about photography. I have a bridge camera it does most everything that a slr does but not quite as well and no detatchable lens . i can mount it afocally and wondered if while taking a picture of jupiter could I use a macro setting and raw to give me more to play with in processing and would it be any better if I did that. also my chip size is (7.78 x 5.83 mm, 0.45 cm²) what would be the best size eyepiece for this chip in terms of exit pupil size. (sorry I dont make any sense but I dont really know how to explain it better as I don't know what i'm doing)

[rowan46]

sorry meant to put this in the help section

[dph1nm]

also my chip size is (7.78 x 5.83 mm, 0.45 cm²) what would be the best size eyepiece for this chip in terms of exit pupil size.

Don't think the chip size is relevant. For optimal afocal imaging I think the eyepiece exit pupil needs to be smaller than the entrance aperture of the camera (this is determined by the F stop of the camera and its focal length), otherwise you lose light. For Jupiter this might not matter of course! I am sure there is also a formula to work out the pixel scale in arcseconds you get, but I would just experiment!

NigelM

[rowan46]

thanks for that. not only an answer, but one i understood. both photography and astronomy are more technical and difficult than I imagined. the more I find out the more it shows my ignorance.

[bcfcciderhead]

I also have a "bridge camera" and thought about taking a few shots of the moon, being so clear it should capture it well, but like you i cant interchange the lenses, i also had the "T" piece and lenses to attach a camera to the eyepiece when i bought the scope, but as you cant change the camera lense you cant screaw it to th "T" piece, so how would you do this? you could just hold it up to the eyepiece maybe?

[ollypenrice]

Holding at the EP is possible but tricky. You can buy little clamps that fasten round the EP and then have a fitment for the bottom of you camera. They are fiddly to set up, getting the camera centralized and orthogonoal, but you do get a result with care. With my compact I found that using a little zoom got me the best results. My device came fom Telescope House but I think Skywatcher also made or make something similar.

Olly

[rowan46]

mine has a filter screw so I got a piece that screws into the filter and then fits over the eyepiece using 3 screws to centralise it seems to work during the day I think I got it from ebay 58mm Digital Camera telescope photo adapter SLR/ DSLR on eBay (end time 14-Oct-10 19:59:29 BST)

[dph1nm]

I have a page of tips for afocal astrophotography which might be of interest, although it is more geared to DSOs than planets

http://www.dur.ac.uk/nigel/metcalfe/astro/afocal.html

I have tried planets with that set-up though.

NigelM