Jupiter / Venus conjunction - did I capture Jupiters moons at 200mm?

[starman1969]

Dude, the comment was directed at “bubu74.” If you follow the indentation in the Threaded View you can see that. It just happen to fall under your post.

Jack

Ok thanks for clearing that up Jack. I wondered why it seemed directed at me.

 

[Carlos Velasquez]

Nice job. Thank you for sharing.

 

[curiousmike1300]

Awesome shot! Thanks for sharing. I also went out last few nights and tried to take good pics of Jupiter and Venus. Mine were not as good, even when I used my brand new Nikon D5200 w/ a 55-300 mm zoom. I tried many exposure settings, but most were at 3200 to 6400 ISOs. Maybe the faster ISO graininess makes the appearance of moons harder .... Anil

I don't think you need that high of an ISO.

Are you on a tripod?

If you look at my second results, you'll see I used ISO 1600, 200mm, f/5.6, 0.6 sec.

Since you're on DX, and have 450mm equivalent, you might try for a 1 second exposure with similar ISO and aperture... but I don't think you can go > 1 second without blurring.

There's a "rule" that says expsosing for stars ( and I presume planets ) you should never have an exposure longer than 500/n, where n is your focal length. So, for you, 500/450 = really close to 1 second.

 

[anilketkar]

Thanks for the tips, Mike. I was using a tripod, but the skies were not very clear. I tried again last night with 300 mm focal length at 800 ISO, f/5.6 and various shutter speeds starting from 1/30 down to 1/2 and 1 sec. I used 2 sec delayed shutter release to avoid vibrations from my pressing the shutter (I don't yet have remote shutter release - arriving soon). The results were still fuzzy. Maybe it was hazy after the thunderstorms (a regular occurrence here almost every evening). Plus, high humidity in the air has likely hindered my ability to see Jupiter's moons ..... Anil

 

[W5JCK]

Thanks for the tips, Mike. I was using a tripod, but the skies were not very clear. I tried again last night with 300 mm focal length at 800 ISO, f/5.6 and various shutter speeds starting from 1/30 down to 1/2 and 1 sec. I used 2 sec delayed shutter release to avoid vibrations from my pressing the shutter (I don't yet have remote shutter release - arriving soon). The results were still fuzzy. Maybe it was hazy after the thunderstorms (a regular occurrence here almost every evening). Plus, high humidity in the air has likely hindered my ability to see Jupiter's moons ..... Anil

Many 300mm and above lenses are not very sharp. Unless you pay a lot of money for one, don't expect crisp and sharp images when you zoom in to 100%. The cheaper kit zooms and medium priced zooms typically are not that sharp. If you are shooting with a DSLR, then be sure to lock up the mirror before doing AP. The mirror being slung out of the way moments before a photo is taken will cause a lot of vibration. So either manually lock up the mirror or shoot using Liveview mode as that also locks up the mirror.

 

[anilketkar]

Thanks for the tips, Jack. I was finally able to get a decent shot of Jupiter's moons (2 or maybe 3?? of them) taken with the Nikon 55-300 mm telephoto at 240 mm, 800 ASA (f/5.3 & shutter speed at 3/4 sec). Here is the cropped up close-up with 2 moons showing, one above and one or two?? below on that 40 degree orbital plane. There is another apparent relatively bright object at 45 deg angle below Venus. I wonder if that is an artifact or something that is real.



I took the photo on a tripod in Liveview, with a 2 sec shutter release delay to avoid the effects of vibration. Still grainy, but that is likely because weather here in south Texas is always steamy and hazy plus my inexperience in Astrophotography :-(..... Anil

 

[squawk]

At the time your EXIF data shows the picture was taken, the moons were much farther from Jupiter than shown in your picture (several times the planet diameter for the closest moon).

There are several S/W packages to show the location of Jupiter's moon, I like the Android App JoveMoons for when I'm at my telescope, and one of the planetarium programs for when I'm on my laptop.

No, he captured the moons. Don't forget that at 1/10th of a second Jupiter is way brighter and thus appears much larger in the photo than it actually is. If he had cranked the shutter down to 1/200th sec then the proportions would have more closely resembled the software depictions. The software does not consider or show the huge amount of glow from Jupiter's surface.

 

[rgibbons]

Russ, do you think the K3 would be to heavy for a refractor?
--
Thanks,
Shane

I use my K3 on my 5" refractor, and 9" SCT reflector.

I don't consider it too heavy, it is 5-10% extra weight to what the mount is already carrying. If your mount is already at it's maximum payload capacity, then maybe a bigger mount would be required to add a camera (and filter wheel, and focuser, and.....)

Russ G.

 

[squawk]

Thank you Russ! I think I've decided to put everything into a k-3 II and look into getting a telescope down the road.
--
Thanks,
Shane

Shane Creel

Explore Shane Creel’s 102 photos on Flickr!

www.flickr.com

 

[rgibbons]

With the K3-II, you have the Astro Tracker built in. I've used this successfully for 60 second exposures of the Andromeda Galaxy (which is several times larger than the moon) with 200 & 300mm lenses. I stack an hour or two worth of exposures (using free DeepSkyStacker) to get a good signal.

If you want longer exposures in a telescope, you will need a good mount, built for Astro Photography (Usually these have guider ports built into the mount). My first mount was a budget mount, I spent a lot of time and money trying to improve it, (I was able to reduce the tracking error to a third of what it originally was), but still couldn't get many keepers at 2 minutes. So I finally bought a more expensive mount that tracks better. Lesson I'm trying to pass on: don't buy a cheap motorized mount if you want to take longer exposure pictures of the night sky.

Russ