Posts Made By: Jason Higley

Lookin' good. I see you took 7 minutes of AVI's. Do you happen to know what the rule of thumb might be for color cams on Mars? (i.e. before rotation-smearing is an issue?) I haven't done any good attempts on Mars yet.

Jason Higley

Nice 'goings-on' in the GRS Paul (and elsewhere too!)

Jason Higley

Which SCT and newtonian can be significant factors too. Each has it's own peculiarities.

With some SCT's you can have issues with not cooling the scope quickly, rapid dewing on the plate glass holding the secondary, mirror flop or eratic focusing, poor mirror figure, field curvature or floppy hard-to-collimate secondary optics.

An 8" newtonian should give you a higher resolution image than a 6" SCT, but if the focal ratio is fast on the 8" (many 8" newts are lower than f/6 these days) you will probably have to use a strong barlow lens to get decent image scale that would compare with an SCT with a higher f/ratio.

I also agree about the mount, try to get a good mount first (it's really the highest priority), that way you can jack up the magnification and still keep the planet in the field of view long enough to shoot a video clip for stacking. A bad mount makes it difficult to impossible to do planet imaging with good planet size/scale. Get an equatorial mount that can handle the weight of your scope, if you get a 6" SCT, it either comes with a goto mount or is often light enough for a CG-5 class mount, however, if you get an 8" newt, watch the capacity of the mount carefully, some can't handle a steel tube 8" newt satisfactorily.

Regarding that camera, if you haven't bought it already, I'd also consider other ones too like a DBK, or use a webcam, or use a point-n-shoot camera if you already have one. Below is my best Jupiter from September this year using a Canon Powershot SX-100 point-n-shoot camera with 10x optical zoom and an old f/7 8" newtonian scope and a TMB 7mm EP.

http://setisociety.org/jupiterMVI_0013sept22amUTdiff.jpg

and below is one of my better Saturn shots from Spring '09 using a Canon Powershot A590 with 4x optical zoom with a 10mm EP and a 2x barlow

http://setisociety.org/Saturn-28-April09-M-1290-r5-s1pt7-reddwn.jpg

And regarding deep space objects, the point-n-shoots can do only a few (but perhaps more than the Neximage Solar System Imager?), here's a link to a gallery of mine done using exclusively point-n-shoot cameras and various (or no) telescopes.

http://www.cfas.org/mediagallery/album.php?aid=20&page=1

The afocal point-n-shoot method is probably the hardest way to go? But it's a way to consider if you don't have money to burn and already have a point-n-shoot camera, and you don't need to have a laptop nearby during shooting!

Regards, Jason Higley.

249 frames this time, AFOCAL from a 90 mm refractor, flipped for comparison to NASA's SOHO satellite

http://setisociety.org/MVI_1015vdubrproc249fr.jpg

and here's the SOHO Shot from earlier that day

http://setisociety.org/SOHO-JAN-14-2010.jpg

Image Stats: 90mm Meade refractor tightly bungee-corded to a Criterion RV-6 mount, Orion Glass Solar Filter, Orion 13% Moon filter, Celestron 96 neutral density filter, 7mm TMB Planetary II EP, AFOCAL Canon Powershot SX100 in video mode, AVI expanded in VirtualDub, 249 frames stacked in Registax 5, post-processed in Roxio PhotoSuite 5.

Regards, Jason Higley

Hi again Charles,

I hope you don't mind, but in the attached I've taken the liberty of re-aligning your blue and red channels and re-processed with my methodology (smaller and other stuff.)

Regards, Jason

Hi Charles,

I like this one too. Your blue looked a little low, so in the attached I've shifted blue and red (and other minor tweaks.)

Jason Higley

Hi Dan,

Nice going, I hadn't heard about using EP projection with that camera. Seems like the EP optics are superior than stacked barlows; it's making for a quite realistic-looking view. Which EP did you use? I hope you use this method in the future; I'd love to see what it does on the other planets!

Jason Higley

The smaller one is attached to this post.

Regards, Jason Higley