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Terry Wood

Jupiter (clearer) Nov 5th 2023 w/Mewlon 180c

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First attempt at Jupiter with DSLR

Started by [email protected], 05/06/2015 12:43AM
Posted 05/06/2015 12:43AM Opening Post
First attempt at planetary with the Canon EOS 6D DSLR last night. It was just something I did on a whim. Initially, I had setup the scope for visual while the kids ran around in the yard. They took a few glimpses of Jupiter while the sky was still quite blue and were nonplussed and continued their chase.

On a whim I decided to attached the camera hastily. I would normally have attempted Backyard EOS with the camera connected to the laptop. In this case, I simply popped off the camera lens and attached the 1.25” nosepiece to the DSLR. I added a Celestron 1.25” 3x barlow for magnification. This was inserted into the WO focuser on my Celestron C8-A XLT. I hadn’t bothered to align or calibrate (rough polar align).

I didn’t give much thought to the in-camera settings since this was a hasty experiment. I changed to video mode, ISO 100 since Jupiter is very bright, Auto Lighting Optimizer to Standard, AWB, AdobeRGB, Picture Style Faithful, Movie Recording Size 1920x1080, 30fps, High Comp IPB (next time will set low compression!).

I would line up Jupiter in the center of the camera’s LCD and press record. Chase the kids around the yard and then I noticed it had wandered off the screen would recenter and try again. I had some difficulty focusing as it seemed the weight of the camera was pulling the focus off when I loosened the screw enough to make fine corrections. Eventually I got it somewhat close by using the magnifying glass feature on the camera for a 10x zoom.

This morning I downloaded PIPP and am absolutely blow away at how much better my stacks are after running the video file through it. A side benefit is that it can crunch the camera produced video files and output an Autostakkert!2–friendly AVI. Beginning with PIPP, I used almost entirely the default settings with a few exceptions. From there into AutoStakkert!2 and finally into Adobe Photoshop CS6.

An exciting start! I'm hoping to get a few more goes at Jupiter while it's still very high in the sky. I caught one of the moons, as it was disappearing I believe, around the edge of the planet. From the tiny dancing white ball on the video to this result was startling to me. I can see the GRS for the first time through my own equipment! :-) I made at least one big mistake which was using compression in the video.

Anyone else done planetary imaging with their DSLR?

Attached Image:

brucesdad13@gmail.com's attachment for post 59356

~ Charlie Stevenson

8" f/5.7 String Telescope - 1st Scope Build; 2nd Place Stellafane 2016 Optical Award for Newtonians 12.5" and Smaller
10" f/4.5 Newtonian (June 2015) mirror refigured by Optic Wave Labs P-V WaveFront 1/14.24, Strehl Ratio 0.993 (Aug '15)
Criterion RV-6 seems to be circa 1973 (June 2015) [For Sale]
Celestron C8-A XLT (January 2015) [For Sale]
Celestron PowerSeeker 70AZ (Christmas 2014)
Aldrich Astronomical Society member since 2015
http://astro.charleskelleystevenson.com/
Posted 05/06/2015 12:49AM #1
Here's another shot from a video taken a little before the previous IIRC.

Attached Image:

brucesdad13@gmail.com's attachment for post 149607

~ Charlie Stevenson

8" f/5.7 String Telescope - 1st Scope Build; 2nd Place Stellafane 2016 Optical Award for Newtonians 12.5" and Smaller
10" f/4.5 Newtonian (June 2015) mirror refigured by Optic Wave Labs P-V WaveFront 1/14.24, Strehl Ratio 0.993 (Aug '15)
Criterion RV-6 seems to be circa 1973 (June 2015) [For Sale]
Celestron C8-A XLT (January 2015) [For Sale]
Celestron PowerSeeker 70AZ (Christmas 2014)
Aldrich Astronomical Society member since 2015
http://astro.charleskelleystevenson.com/