Hi folks i was out last night looking at jupiter with my skywatcher 4inch refractor so i decided to take a small avi movie this is the result ,1000 frames put through registax, camera was my canon 450d using backyardeos.Also using eyepiece projection with 25mm eyepiece the mount was an neq6 pro pier mounted, jupiter was quite low at only 30 degrees above horizon any thoughts and comments on how to improve would be fantastic cheers.
G'day Nik,Raymo,kevin and Jo thanks for the nice comments and advice on my jupiter image.At the same time i was taking this avi i also had my 8"sct set up,it was collimated well and had plenty of time to cool down but to my surprise the little 4inch refractor came out on top with far better views of jupiter.Jo my 450d was set to manual,iso 800 and 1/20sec exp then just captured 1000 frames with backyardeos,cheers.
Hi Paul, It's not unusual for a smaller refractor to produce better images than a larger SCT or Newt; having no central obstruction helps, and also
the larger the scope, the more it is affected by atmospheric
turbulence, and light pollution; but given decent atmospheric conditions an 8" SCT or Mak or Newt will always show more detail than a 4" ref.
Simple laws of physics, larger diameter, better resolution.
raymo
Nice job.. very nice!! I tried having a go at Jupiter last night also but really struggled to get the focus down. I have a 120mm refractor and after looking at how nice and round the moons are in your image, I am beginning to wonder whether it needs collimating. It's a shame that it's so low on the horizon, it doesn't help!!
Hi Brett ,Thanks for having a look, I focused on Sirius then slewed across to Jupiter it sounds very basic but seemed to to the job , yes the altitude is very low at the moment but looking at the charts it shows Jupiter at about 60 or so degrees in 2016 and if you can wait till 2020 it will be at 80 degrees , seems a lifetime away cheers.
