I'm curious how your planetary imaging sessions run.
Occasionally I'll hear people say 'there was some good seeing around midnight, so I took this shot of Jupiter'.
I guess my own sessions consist of a long interval dedicated to setup/swearing, then I'll image whatever planets I can see for about an hour, then I'm done. The seeing is whatever happened to be the case during that 1 hour interval. After that, I'll reconfigure for visual or for DSO imaging because I want to see/do more stuff.
So do you guys just kind of sit on the one planet all night like a fisherman waiting for a bite?
By virtue of where I do my astro from, I do DSO stuff until Jupiter and Saturn clear my house. I use my DSLR with lens for DSO and my telescope with a ZWO camera for planetary stuff... mainly because I lost my camera adapater sometime last week and can't find it.....
I think the thing for me is that the process of swapping over for DSO photography is a bit onerous. I don't like to be swapping equipment in the dark. Even using the same telescope, it takes about an hour before I'm back up and running.
The biggest thing I'm finding is that the model has to be pretty spot-on so the go-to's are accurate because the field of view is so tiny. I still use my finderscope because I like having that confirmation.
Also, focus is critical. What do you guys use? Bahtinov? Slew away to a star and run a V-curve? (using which software?). Or do you use focus assist within sharpcap / firecap?
The seeing can fluctuate from one (milli)second to the next, and after a while you get a feel from the "live view" whether it's worth hitting record or not.
Just like DSO image, it's a case of garbage in, garbage out
Live view 5 x zoom on BYEOS with my 6” and 8” newts , my Canon 600D and Televue Powermates tells me how stable the atmospheric conditions are when I image the planets or the moon
If the planet or surface is jumping around like a ping pong ball in a wind tunnel tube then no matter how many AVI frames you capture , the final image will be sub standard and you can’t process your way out of it.
If there’s patches of stability during a capture then “lucky imaging” will produce a reasonable image
You rarely get a stable planet for longer than a few seconds at my image scales and focal lengths
You get a feel of how conditions are by many nights outside with the same set ups , in other words experience kicks in
For DSO imaging , I know how atmospheric conditions are almost straight away when I focus on a small star near my intended object. Once focused , a Tac sharp star with nice sharp diffraction skies means good to excellent conditions and a fat or slightly bloated star with less acute diffraction spikes means ordinary or poor conditions.Its a good indicator of conditions
Another thing that I'll add is to become a part-time Meteorologist. Learn the weather, both globally and locally. By globally I mean keeping an eye out on the jet stream (if it passes over your site) and locally would be real specific like your backyard as opposed to your town/city. Not essential by all means and completely over kill for beginners but this is where something like a Davis weather station can be handy.
Having said all this, for me sometimes it's planned and sometimes it's just a random no look, poke the scope out the window session. Even if the clouds are out.
