Small window of good seeing this morning gave me a chance to have another go at Uranus. Was up at 2am for Mars anyway. Seeing went bad, had a break, came back and it was raining. But it was good for this 6 min video of Uranus. Pretty much as it came out of AS!3, little bit of de-noising in registax, colour unchanged. With the Canon 60D on ISO 2000.
Nice effort Nick, I've never taken any of the planets beyond Saturn. This must be small and hard to find but the seeing was good enough to resolve the edges of the disk reasonably well. Well done.
Thanks Michael and Marc. It is a fun one to do because it's hard to find. What I've found is you need a night with good seeing and a dark sky. Your finderscope needs to be pretty well aligned with your camera. I've got an illuminated reticle which helps against the dark background. I then do a 2-star alignment using Bellatrix and Hamal, and test the GoTo on Mars to see how close it is. Last night it was pretty close. Then try the GoTo on Uranus and you should be able to just see it in the finderscope close to the center of the crosshairs. Then it's just a matter of getting it on the camera.
So it's still coming up pretty late in the night. Will try that next see if I can find it. My sky LP is pretty bad though. I have to look for a blue dot in that sea of orange then hey?
Around 2:30am is not bad for me, I lose it behind a tree soon after that. I could shift to a different spot if I wanted to avoid that. 3-4am would probably be better. I've got no real light pollution which helps, but you should still be able to get it. In the finderscope it's a pretty small pinprick dot.
Thanks Andrew, I checked for moons but couldn't see any. They might need a higher ISO setting maybe. Yes it is quite low, lower than Mars. I guess it would be better in the Northern Hemisphere this year for Uranus?
Thanks Andrew, I checked for moons but couldn't see any. They might need a higher ISO setting maybe. Yes it is quite low, lower than Mars. I guess it would be better in the Northern Hemisphere this year for Uranus?
Next time you are imaging the ice giants, try a range of exposure levels and take multiple images. Choose the one you used here for the planet (as it seems spot on), then increase ISO or exposure time (or both) to see if you can eek out the moons from the dark. At +14 mag they wont be easy, but with enough exposure time you might get lucky
I'll have to remember to try that next time. I can increase the ISO a bit, but it starts getting noisy. I think I'm already maxxed out with the exposure time at 1/60 sec. With the 60D in 640x480 crop mode, frames per second is set at 60fps. If I took it out of NTSC mode it would be 50fps and I might be able to increase exposure time to 1/50 sec. I've been shooting all the planets (except Venus) at 1/60 sec exposure time, and just varying the ISO. Venus is too bright at the lowest gain setting of 200 with exp at 1/60, so for Venus I've been shortening the exp time to 1/400 sec.
Next time you are imaging the ice giants, try a range of exposure levels and take multiple images. Choose the one you used here for the planet (as it seems spot on), then increase ISO or exposure time (or both) to see if you can eek out the moons from the dark. At +14 mag they wont be easy, but with enough exposure time you might get lucky
Is there any particular wavelength at which it would be brighter to image?
I'll have to remember to try that next time. I can increase the ISO a bit, but it starts getting noisy. I think I'm already maxxed out with the exposure time at 1/60 sec. With the 60D in 640x480 crop mode, frames per second is set at 60fps. If I took it out of NTSC mode it would be 50fps and I might be able to increase exposure time to 1/50 sec. I've been shooting all the planets (except Venus) at 1/60 sec exposure time, and just varying the ISO. Venus is too bright at the lowest gain setting of 200 with exp at 1/60, so for Venus I've been shortening the exp time to 1/400 sec.
Baader does a U-Venus filter at 350nm that's supposed to give you more details with the Venus atmosphere. I have one which I used for Deepsky but never tried it on Venus yet.
Baader does a U-Venus filter at 350nm that's supposed to give you more details with the Venus atmosphere. I have one which I used for Deepsky but never tried it on Venus yet.
That might work. I was wondering how an ADC would go on Venus, since it's always low in the sky and looks quite shimmery to me with distorted colours around the edges.
That might work. I was wondering how an ADC would go on Venus, since it's always low in the sky and looks quite shimmery to me with distorted colours around the edges.
I'm still enquiring about the ADC. Maybe not the silver bullet it claims to be. Will know more soon.
I'll have to remember to try that next time. I can increase the ISO a bit, but it starts getting noisy. I think I'm already maxxed out with the exposure time at 1/60 sec. With the 60D in 640x480 crop mode, frames per second is set at 60fps. If I took it out of NTSC mode it would be 50fps and I might be able to increase exposure time to 1/50 sec. I've been shooting all the planets (except Venus) at 1/60 sec exposure time, and just varying the ISO. Venus is too bright at the lowest gain setting of 200 with exp at 1/60, so for Venus I've been shortening the exp time to 1/400 sec.
Don't worry about the noise too much - the stacking process will remove the noise if you get enough frames. Keep the 1/60 shutter speed, try ISO levels right up to the maximum for 3 -5 minutes
Quote:
Originally Posted by multiweb
Baader does a U-Venus filter at 350nm that's supposed to give you more details with the Venus atmosphere. I have one which I used for Deepsky but never tried it on Venus yet.
I'm yet to try that one.
Will know more soon.
