astrophotos2

Planetary imaging is easier than deep sky objects, especially with the inception of digital camcorders and cameras. Special adapters are now available to attach digital cameras to telescope eye pieces to take images such as these of Saturn and Jupiter posted here.
Digital image processing plays an important role in bringing out details from the raw images. The images posted here have been taken using a 10" newtonian reflector (1000mm, 133X mag.) under bad seeing conditions (faintest stars are of 5th or 6th magnitude to the naked eye). They are processed using PaintShop Pro image processing software.

Planetary Photographs

   The image of Saturn (above) shows her rings and a faint detail on her surface. 20 images layered, unsharp mask applied.

    The image of Jupiter (above right) shows its cloud bands and two of its jovian satellites. 40 images layered, unsharp mask and median filter applied.

    The close up of Jupiter (above) shows the cloud bands in greater detail.

     All pictures taken with 10" reflector @ 133X, Sony Mavica digital camera handheld to the eye-piece (afocal projection).

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The above picture is a combination of 9 images taken on Feb. 19, 2003 from Westmont, IL. The scope used was a 10" F/4.9 Dobsonian using a 13.8mm SWA Meade eyepiece. The camera (Olympus Camedia C2040Z) was held afocally to the eyepiece set to f/2.8 and the images were bracketted (exposures from 1/15th sec. to 1/30th sec.). The GRS, I believe, is just coming into view on the upper limb.

The picture on the left was taken on Feb. 26, 2003 using the same setup described above. However, this time, 40 images were stacked using astrostacks software after cropping and aligning.

Planet Mars gets to be the closest to our Earth on Aug. 27th, 2003 in recorded history (in over 3,000 years). So in the run-up to the event, we went out to the Naperville Astronomical Association's observatory to look for features on Mars early in the morning on Aug, 9th, 2003. The above two single exposure images (1/20th and 1/30th of a second) using a digital camera (olympus C2040 Zoom) handheld to the eyepiece. The map below can be used as reference to see the details.