I was able to sneak in an image of Saturn on 8/24 after I imaged Jupiter. The image is blurry and lacking detail, though. I didn't realize I had my eyepiece zoomed in to about 10-12 mm, and it was way too much magnification for my scope (6", 150mm). My best guess is about 320X magnification! Yikes. Under perfect seeing and being generous, I think I'd be limited to about 300x magnification. Anyway, it's a good lesson for me about not going beyond the limits of: 1) my equipment, and 2) seeing conditions. I thought I'd post it to share the experience/outcome with everyone.
Sky-Watcher 150P Classic (1200mm fL, F/8) -- Dobsonian mount
Baader Mark IV zoom (at 12mm fL) with Tele Vue PowerMate (2x)
Canon SL3 (250D) - 1920x 1080, 60 fps; roughly 1000 frames
Software: PIP, AS!3, Registax.
But, as always, the entire process was educational and a great learning experience! I hadn't attempted this before with my Dob-mounted reflector and camera.
I was able to sneak in an image of Saturn on 8/24 after I imaged Jupiter. The image is blurry and lacking detail, though. I didn't realize I had my eyepiece zoomed in to about 10-12 mm, and it was way too much magnification for my scope (6", 150mm). My best guess is about 320X magnification! Yikes. Under perfect seeing and being generous, I think I'd be limited to about 300x magnification. Anyway, it's a good lesson for me about not going beyond the limits of: 1) my equipment, and 2) seeing conditions. I thought I'd post it to share the experience/outcome with everyone.
Sky-Watcher 150P Classic (1200mm fL, F/8) -- Dobsonian mount
Baader Mark IV zoom (at 12mm fL) with Tele Vue PowerMate (2x)
Canon SL3 (250D) - 1920x 1080, 60 fps; roughly 1000 frames
Software: PIP, AS!3, Registax.But, as always, the entire process was educational and a great learning experience! I hadn't attempted this before with my Dob-mounted reflector and camera.
Hi Greg, you're going across the full gamut of astrophotograhy! This is great!
I have a suspicion you have more there than you're seeing. It looks like you've either over-done the wavelets or some other processing step to cause Saturn to look so bright and over processed.
On your magnification, how did you come to 320x? A 1200mm scope with a 12mm eyepiece gives you 100X, and a 2X powermate gives you 200X. Unless there's something you're not sharing, that's about the magnification you have. Assume this is eyepiece projection since you're using an eyepiece. I don't think 200X is too much for a 6" scope. In my 11", I had a 2X powermate and at 5600mm, although just using a small camera but it was highly magnified, although probably too much for bad seeing. I should have shot more at 2800mm. It's easy to do planetary, but like most things, take a bit to master. Others like Joe Comeau has done more than many so he may be more help
I was trying my hand at this recently and gave Saturn a whirl on opposition day and the day after. I tried a bit of Jupiter as well. None of the days was really great seeing. My saturn images were not very good, but I have at least one jupiter image I don't mind.
Terri
Hi Greg, you're going across the full gamut of astrophotograhy! This is great!
I have a suspicion you have more there than you're seeing. It looks like you've either over-done the wavelets or some other processing step to cause Saturn to look so bright and over processed.
On your magnification, how did you come to 320x? A 1200mm scope with a 12mm eyepiece gives you 100X, and a 2X powermate gives you 200X. Unless there's something you're not sharing, that's about the magnification you have. Assume this is eyepiece projection since you're using an eyepiece. I don't think 200X is too much for a 6" scope. In my 11", I had a 2X powermate and at 5600mm, although just using a small camera but it was highly magnified, although probably too much for bad seeing. I should have shot more at 2800mm. It's easy to do planetary, but like most things, take a bit to master. Others like Joe Comeau has done more than many so he may be more help
I was trying my hand at this recently and gave Saturn a whirl on opposition day and the day after. I tried a bit of Jupiter as well. None of the days was really great seeing. My saturn images were not very good, but I have at least one jupiter image I don't mind.
Terri
Hi Terri. Thanks for the info. I tried to go very light on the wavelets in Registax since if I moved the sliders much at all, the image deteriorated very quickly. I didn't process this further than Registax.
As far as magnification, may be an error on my part. Since I have a TV PM, my starting telescope fL was 2400, divided that by the 12mm fL of the eyepiece, and then I assumed (perhaps wrongly) that I needed to take into account the 1.6x crop factor of my APS-C DSLR. Should the crop factor not be taken into account for total magnification and used just for framing purposes? I'm so used to figuring it into my calculations I didn't think about not taking it into account!
Thanks, Terri!
Greg
