CelestialSpectator.com~Jupiter and Moon Astrophotography Shoot -

The		elestial		pectator
Take time out of our busy lives to gaze into the magnificent skies

Home Posts About Resources

An Astronomy Blog

Jupiter and Moon Astrophotography Shoot	10.27.2009 20:30

I had the Meade 70mm refractor telescope for awhile, and I also have a Nikon D40 digital SLR camera, so I only needed to connect the two in order to get some astrophotography shots*. I finally received the two pieces necessary to connect the camera to the telescope as a birthday gift (thanks Mom & Dad!), and some of the first fruits are pics of Jupiter and Luna. Jupiter Right now is close to the best time of year to see and image Jupiter (along with its four Galilean moons). I had my camera/scope pointed at Jupiter and was adjusting the exposure time to get pictures with the moons visible and planet overexposed and also moons not visible and planet features showing well. A man walked up (turned out to be a fellow amateur astronomer) and asked about the setup, and suggested that I take a series of pictures and use computer software to process and stack them, bringing out the cloud band features. I only took 10 pictures, but was quite pleased with the result:


The top picture above is a single unprocessed exposure (except it's cropped), and the next is the final stacked image. It looks less round and more flat in the stacked image, so I can use some practice with the software, but the features are greatly improved. The software is Registax 5 by the way. In the uncropped image, the planet hardly takes up any of the rectangular image frame (i.e. it is mostly black):

So it is clear that for planetary imaging my setup will need some magnification. A lot of wasted pixels there! I posted a question to the Cloudy Nights forum, and was informed of two methods of astrophotography magnification: barlow lenses and eyepiece projection. I'll explain those another time. Both would require additional equipment to append to my current setup. Luna Almost anytime is a good time to photograph the moon, so I did that as well over the weekend. The image of the half-moon looked so crisp at the time that I didn't bother taking a multitude for stacking purposes, but after getting the results with the Jupiter photo, I took the 4 or 5 images of the moon that I had and ran them through Registax also. It certainly makes for a very professional looking moon photo (original on top, processed/stacked on bottom):


I should mention that in the processed moon image, it was also converted to black and white. I'll see what difference is made with even more images to stack. For the future, I can either invest in the above (and below) mentioned equipment to magnify the view for planetary astrophotography, or purchase a tracking motor for the equatorial mount so I can take beautiful wide-field photos. * Connecting them requires a 1.25" eyepiece socket to standard T-mount adapter, and a T-mount to Nikon specific camera adapter. A barlow lens would fit between the scope and the first adapter. An eyepiece projection adapter is the same as the 1.25" to T-mount adapter except an eyepiece can be placed inside.
No Comments Read/Leave Comments

Unique Visitors: 4969 (since 4.28.2008)

5 Latest Posts:

International Year of ASTRONOMY 2009

© 2008, Andrew Ging