Monday, August 10, 2020

Trying to Grab The Planets


Lets be honest here, these are TERRIBLE photographs of the planets!  I went out and set up one of my telescopes, a 106mm refractor on an equatorial mount which will track objects in the sky.  Then I made my first attempt to get a photograph of both Jupiter, above, and Saturn, below.  It was very frustrating, operating the telescope and all the extra equipment - the special astronomy camera, and a laptop and the new software.  What I really wanted to do, and was successful at, was that I wanted short movies, perhaps a minute long of each planet, so beginners could see how much planets "bounce around" from the turbulence in the atmosphere.  And I got that, but then I tried to extract some still photographs from the video, and this is the result. Some members of our club are experts in taking those videos, and then "stacking" the best images to make one still photograph, and those images almost look like they were from the Hubble Space Telescope.  There is no risk you will fine excellent photographs like that here!

 

2 comments:

  1. I love that you spend so much time setting up special equipment, telescope and cameras to bring these planet photos to us. Amazing to think that the planets are bouncing around in the atmosphere. Again, I learned something new. I enjoy the photos.
    Joan

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  2. I never knew that planets "bounced around". Learned something new. It's still amazing to see these photos and I'm glad you posted them. betsey

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