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CapturingTheNight — Saturn First Try
Published: 2011-07-22 12:12:14 +0000 UTC; Views: 1624; Favourites: 50; Downloads: 0
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Description
My first try at capturing a planet on camera. I know that my telescope is not the best thing for planetary work. It's fast aperture and shorter focal length don't lend themselves to detailed images of solar system objects. It's more designed for deep space objects like nebulas, globular clusters and galaxies. You also need really stable atmospheric conditions. Something that I didn't have this evening.10 inch (25cm) F/4 Newtonian Telescope
NEQ6 Pro Goto Computerised Telescope Mount
Televue 4 X Powermate
2 X Barlow
3 minute video captured with a Canon EOS 60D
Converted to AVI
Best frames alligned and stacked in Registax
Final processing in Photoshop Elements 8.0
© Greg Gibbs. You may not use, replicate, manipulate, or modify this image without my permission. All Rights Reserved.
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Comments: 65
Thank you so much Yeah it is not the best ever picture of it but it sort of resembles what you see through a telescope. My telescope is not the best for planetary imaging
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I'm glad you think so. Thanks
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Thank you so much 
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Jupiter is out nicely right now and I just got my first shots of it! Not as good as what you did though lol I have an old Nexstar5.
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Greg, what kind of computer are you running to stack, Mac or Windows? I run all Macs in my house and have found a brilliant program for image stacking. Because I don't run registax I don't have anything to compare it to but I like it. It's called Keith's image stacker.
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I run windows but I am seriously considering a Mac at the moment. I know they are much better for image and video processing, and after seeing a friends one in action the other day, i'm very much willing to switch. I'll keep that program in mind if I do switch. I've actually got a proper astronomical webcam in the post at the moment. Can't wait for it to arrive and try it out. Should be able to do much better shots than this one.
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I just got the recent edition of Australian sky and telescope and it has a list of all video stacking software for the different platforms and the prices for them. If you would like I could scan the page and send it to your email address.
Cheers,
Nathan
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Thanks for the heads up and offer Nathan, but I'm a subsciber of that mag, so I have already seen that list. Will definately come in handy in the future.
Hows that autoguider setup going for you? I think I have only had one imaging night in the last month or so. Grrrr @ clouds
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well i have ordered tube rings for it and their being shipped right now but i really need to work on polar alignment first because i am getting star trailing at 10 second exposures and on top of that the clouds just dont go away
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Good to hear you are getting the tube rings. Polar allignment is key. I thought I could cheat a little bit by just using autoguiding and being "close enough" but I was wrong. First off I found it was very hard to frame an object as you would point the scope at the target and by the time you got the autoguider going the target had drifted out of the frame. A secondly- even if you are quick enough to keep the target in frame the field of view will rotate around the guide star if you are not pretty close with alignment. It took me about 4 very frustrating hours but I finally dark adjusted my eyes one night and managed to find the stars in octans in the polar scope of my mount. It is not exactly spot on. For that you need to drift align to fine tune it, but it's good enough for me at the moment and I can get about 3 minutes unguided. Once I was aligned I marked the position of the tripod legs on the concrete slab I poured for my scope.
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yeh i know what you mean by that, i have tried pointing my mount in a rough southerly direction but i need to be spot on with my mount because i am just getting too much star trailing. so all i need to learn now is how to drift align my scope and hopefully good thing will result.
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great capture. your gallery always impresses me
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Thank you very much
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no problem. Keep doing your thing. Your work is always great to look at
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Thank you very much
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Great shot! Are you going to try planetary photography in the future?
I noticed you can see the current storm raging around the top of the planet as the darker band, with a slight green hue above. The pictures of it from Hubble are really amazing!
Nice work as always Greg! 
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Cheers. Thank you very much Shaun
At the moment, I'm happy to just stick to the deep space objects.
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Thats a great first attempt!
I tried taking a picture of Jupiter in March when I found it without a starfinder, used my DIY compact camera rig and just got a couple of tiny blurred dots.
Its amzing how much detail to can see through a telescope, shame its so difficult to take pictures of.
Thank for the kind comments earlier by the way, I only just read them!
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Not a problem at all and Thank you very much for the kind feedback
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Thank you very much
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Thanks a lot for giving it a try! It's better than what I expected, given the limitations you said you had. Way to go! I am highly impressed.
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Again, Thank you
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looks good. I took almost the exact pic a few nights ago. I'll post it for you.
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Thank you
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I put it up for you. sorry it took me so long.
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I just realised that for some reason, I was watching you but I wasn't seeing any of your work in my messages. I've now fixed this problem (I think) Thanks for letting me know, or your great pic may have slipped through.
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I'm glad you think so Carl. Thanks
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Oh yeah, I think its really cool!
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Very nice.
With all humidity, conditions here pretty well suck too.
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Thank you
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That it is. I think thats what i'll mainly be doing with planets until I get better gear. Just looking at them......
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