Quote:
Originally Posted by mobbie
- I found Saturn and could see the rings etc quite well, but it was very small in the 9mm and 25mm lens I used. I tried the different sizes, barlow etc as well but still found that I could see the planet and the main parts of the rings but no features (such as the gap between the rings). How do I get closer and more detail?
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Sadly, you can't. This is a fact of life, sorry to say, unless you buy a much bigger scope with a humongous focal length that gives you both high resolution and high magnification. And then you just need to get the atmosphere to stay frozen for the half an hour or so that you want to view, or better still get up into space where there is no atmosphere at all moving in front of you! And altough Saturn might be a little smaller than Jupiter it is nearly twice as far away. Buy all the eyepieces and barlows you want, but it isn't going to help much.
The speccy pictures you might see are done either by the Cassini spacecraft orbiting around the planet, or if its from the ground here on Earth it is with video footage through a large (12" at least) aperture with a longish focal length, then the best frames in the video picked out, stacked and processed. The normal method of snapping a one-off shot wont get you much satisfaction. I do encourage you to range through the photography sections of the forum here to see what others are doing, they usually describe their gear and settings to help you see what you need to do.
Good luck, I'm sure the other will be a long soon, and I hope you have deep pockets - if you're serious about your photography, you're going to need them.