A Short Solar System Imaging Session

My previous two blog entries were about this same topic but with different images shot on the same day (earlier in the day during daylight) with the same equipment.  These few latest blog entries are about revisiting some older videos and images in an effort to understand a new software program meant for processing this type of imaging data.  This time around in this blog entry, I'll share the resulting images of some planets and our moon that Sheila and I observed that evening.

In case you haven't yet read the couple of previous blog entries, these photos in this blog entry are from a short imaging session I had with Sheila back in November.  We observed the moon, Jupiter, Saturn and Venus.  I think we were only out there for less than a half hour but we came back into the house rather cold since it was a brisk 40 degrees or so.  That is about my limit on tolerating cold weather and, even then, I don't want to be out longer than a few minutes. 

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Note:  A little over a year ago, Sheila and I brought two of my telescopes to her parents' house to view the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.  The view was obstructed at our house so we loaded up the car with all the gear necessary for imaging and observing and went to Sheila's parents' house for this event.  Her dad watched the conjunction with us in one telescope while I imaged on a separate telescope.  The temperature was in the single digits and Sheila ended up with hypothermia while I ended up with frostbitten fingers.  Sheila recovered later that night while my recovery required about four weeks in total.  Neither of us have any desire to be out in the cold anymore though.  To read about that day, see this blog entry.  

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For each of these photos, below, I was seriously handicapping myself by using a small, beginner telescope called the Orion Apex 102mm Mak-Cass telescope.  For the images and videos I was not using an astronomy camera but using my little Sony a6000 pocketable travel camera.  Also, I was not using a tracking mount which meant that the moon and planets were quickly drifting out of view every few seconds requiring me to manually adjust the pointing of the telescope over and over.  This is worth mentioning because it does make a big difference when it comes to difficulty in attaining a good final image.  

First, let's talk about the moon.  The full moon, below, was shot a very short while before this particular evening that I had mentioned but the same telescope and camera was used within a short period of time so I'm grouping them together here as lunar imaging examples.  This was during a very short "testing period" after I had received this little telescope.  I have far better images of the moon than we see here on this page using other telescopes but it is always interesting to challenge yourself with different equipment even if that equipment is low end equipment like I used on these two evenings.  I found that if you properly stack images and only use the best of the best images from an acceptable video file, you can attain a good resulting final image.  So, in this respect, the software that I had spent some time learning was not time wasted.  I actually like these images...

Below are the final planetary images that Sheila and I viewed and imaged.  These images are significantly better than the images I had previously shared months ago from this same session (I think I shared them but maybe not...  these images here are far better anyway so there is no loss if I hadn't shared the others).  I actually used the same original video files this time around to attain these final images, below, that I had previously used for my first set of images.  The software, using multiple stacked images taken from video files, did an excellent job at correcting all of the little telescope's shortcomings.  Also worth mentioning again is that I was not using a tracking mount.  I simply had this little telescope mounted on one of my small manual mounts.  Actually, I believe this telescope was mounted on my photo tripod which isn't all that stable compared to a telescope mount!

To read a little more about our short evening observing and imaging these solar system objects, you can click on this link.  There is a video of the highlights of our observing session in that blog entry as well.  

When the climate gets a bit more tolerable for me and the winter clouds have finally left the area, I look forward to doing more planetary imaging with a couple of my better and larger telescopes.  Although I like these images above, I know I can get impressively better images with my better and more appropriate astronomy gear.  I learned a lot in this exercise though and that was the point.