Virgin Astro-shoot....

kirbyong · Post by **kirbyong** » Wed Aug 12, 2009 7:41 pm

hey. okay i will take the advise. thanks orly (:

orly_andico · Post by **orly_andico** » Wed Aug 12, 2009 8:41 pm

the "Av" mode will be wildly inaccurate, as well.. because the frame is mostly dark (sky) the camera will overexpose Jupiter and you will get a lot of bloom (just like the photo at the start of this thread).

Put the camera on manual mode, manual focus, focus it to infinity (may be challenging... auto-focus doesn't work very well on tiny bright objects) use f/8 or f/11 and start at 1/125 second, maybe ISO 400.

Vary as necessary.

the other thing is, the exposure required to image the moons, will over-expose Jupiter's disk. So take a lot of exposures (say f/11, and 1/60, 1/125, 1/250, 1/500 second) and then later on you can stack them using Registax (free software).

kirbyong · Post by **kirbyong** » Wed Aug 12, 2009 8:57 pm

i see. thanks orly (: yay singpore night sky is pretty clear today(:

gahhhh when i take the picture, jupiter just appears as one small speck ):

orly_andico · Post by **orly_andico** » Wed Aug 12, 2009 9:09 pm

Kirby, unfortunately that's really how things are :-P

But the good news is you can get a decent telescope for less than the price of a 75-300mm lens. Even with no tracking mount, people have gotten good-enough results (e.g. someone on the Philippines yahoogroup I'm a member of, using a P&S digicam and a 90mm f5.6 Chinese achromat costing $250 SGD, managed to image all 4 bands on Jupiter). And that's on an ordinary photo tripod, not a fancy telescope mount.

When you are ready to purchase a telescope, I strongly suggest going to www.williamoptics.com they deliver world-wide (the price includes delivery charges) so you'll only have to pay the 7% GST (or so I've been advised). Some of their scopes like the ZS66 SD, ZS70 ED, Megrez 72, cost about as much as camera lenses but will image Jupiter well, and are of sufficiently good quality that you won't feel that you compromised.

kirbyong · Post by **kirbyong** » Wed Aug 12, 2009 9:18 pm

hey. haha true true. maybe i should read up more on taking photographs, i think the problem is me, not my camera.
haha. alright i shall get a proper telescope... when i'm older. haha.

thanks so much for your help in this. appreciate it! (:

Sivakis · Post by **Sivakis** » Wed Aug 12, 2009 11:53 pm

Tried to get some trails from the Perseid event.... my wife and I only saw 1 faint trail each... oh well. End up shooting Jupiter again wahahahah....

Ok, probably can't resolve the bands without some additional equipment.

But suddenly... my world became so much smaller when I saw this shot...

kirbyong · Post by **kirbyong** » Thu Aug 13, 2009 12:11 am

Sivakis wrote:Tried to get some trails from the Perseid event.... my wife and I only saw 1 faint trail each... oh well. End up shooting Jupiter again wahahahah....

Ok, probably can't resolve the bands without some additional equipment.

But suddenly... my world became so much smaller when I saw this shot...

hey sivakis. THAT is exactly what i have captured. haha but mine's even smaller. any suggestions how to get a successful pic of jupiter?

Sivakis · Post by **Sivakis** » Thu Aug 13, 2009 12:21 am

kirbyong wrote:
Sivakis wrote:Tried to get some trails from the Perseid event.... my wife and I only saw 1 faint trail each... oh well. End up shooting Jupiter again wahahahah....

Ok, probably can't resolve the bands without some additional equipment.

But suddenly... my world became so much smaller when I saw this shot...

hey sivakis. THAT is exactly what i have captured. haha but mine's even smaller. any suggestions how to get a successful pic of jupiter?

Actually that last pic was resized down.

The original pic at 100% is this size: