Feeling very small while seeing Saturn Mars and Jupiter for the 1st time in my own telescope

[kiwi1960]

1 hour ago, Snark said:

Well, sure it looks bigger on the horizon; it's a common optical illusion, a psychological effect of perspective.  But that happens regardless of whether you're in Auckland or Stockholm or Singapore.

And if we grant that the moon's more likely to be near the horizon if you're "near the poles"... that would argue that it looks bigger there, because of that illusion. 

 

Yeah, I got suckered in by Hollywood... and my bad eyesight.

[Robotengineer]

The first time I saw a planet through a telescope was when I was about 6 or so, but I don't really remember it and can't say much about how I felt as I didn't really feel anything special. 

Last year I got a modest refractor (80mm) and looked at Saturn and Jupiter, and was quite amazed (especially given the aperture). Saturn's rings were clearly visible, and I could see 4 bands on Jupiter, though not as clearly as Saturn. It was beautiful and kind of awe inspiring. Having primarily seen pictures from missions, seeing the real planets with my own eyes was simply awesome, and the fact that we had sent spacecraft there (and that I may one day visit as well) was simply fantastic. 

This year, I have tried looking at Mars but it is simply too low on the horizon to get any detail (it being summer in North America and me not living in Brownsville or Florida). Which kind of sucks given that the next opposition is in 2018. At least by then I should have my telescope project finished... 

[Bill Phil]

Just rember that you are a part of the universe, you are in the universe, and that the universe is also within you. This means you're a part of the universe that's observing another part.

Yeah, I didn't really come up with the phrases.

[kurja]

7 hours ago, UmbralRaptor said:

Okay, how? Especially given that a "decent" DSLR is likely out of the price range. And, well, attempting to image the moon and starfields on a P&S is rather frustrating. (I really should take a shot at M31 at some point to demonstrate the pointlessness of trying astrophotography with a low end camera)

I'd say that what is absolutely needed in the camera is the ability to put all settings in manual, focus and exposure, and record raw format data, that's about it. That's what the dedicated astro imaging devices do afterall - they're just a sensor in a box with no bells or whistles. In principle  I have a decade old dslr, one of the first ones that had a cmos sensor. Not to say that better wouldn't be better though. What really matters for image quality on the camera end, is the signal to noise ratio. As for how: I won't type a book here, plenty of information available online, but in essence you need a tracking mount, so you can expose for longer (which increases snr). Like you found out, you can't expose for longer than a few seconds without the stars stretching out in the picture when you're not using a tracking mechanism. If you're on a shoestring budget, diy solutions are possible, or look for a small equatorial mount with a motor on the right ascension axis. Then you can expose for say twenty to sixty seconds instead of two to six, depending on your field of view, and this makes all the difference in the world. Then, you get a series of exposures, and start looking into image calibration and integration - these steps are where the image is really made! For a starting point, you could look at free software such as Regim and Deep sky stacker. Even ESA has used open source Huginn for processing their data - Adobe products definitely not required.

I should add a disclaimer, using cheapest possible hardware definitely does limit what one can do, noone is going to get hubble-esque pics with a small tracker and a camera lens & command line tools, I definitely can't, my point here is that contrary to what you said you really don't need upwards of 5,000$ just to get your feet wet.

A few examples, here's a wide angle shot that I've doodled on, you can also see the tracking motion in the blurred treetops

 

And the Andromeda & satellite galaxies with a 200mm camera lens

[UmbralRaptor]

Let me get back to on this is in a few months. Googling suggests that there might actually be some barn door type trackers that don't require a basement/garage full of machine tools?

[kurja]

On 7/16/2016 at 9:17 PM, UmbralRaptor said:

Let me get back to on this is in a few months. Googling suggests that there might actually be some barn door type trackers that don't require a basement/garage full of machine tools?

A "barn door" tracker would do it, yes. You'll probably need to be a little inventive to find and fit together the necessary parts to get it rotating at the correct rate, 0.25 degrees per minute, otherwise it should not be too complicated. And you need something to put the thing on top of, to actually use it.

Is that Messier 81 in you profile pic? Your photo?

[UmbralRaptor]

On 7/18/2016 at 0:07 AM, kurja said:

A "barn door" tracker would do it, yes. You'll probably need to be a little inventive to find and fit together the necessary parts to get it rotating at the correct rate, 0.25 degrees per minute, otherwise it should not be too complicated. And you need something to put the thing on top of, to actually use it.

Is that Messier 81 in you profile pic? Your photo?

"Thing on top" would most likely be a Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS, barring spending on a DSLR. As for my profile pic, it's an SDSS g-band image of a nameless galaxy at z = 0.027. Admittedly I used the Stripe 82 data instead of DR7 and messed with the contrast and image size in DS9.

Full size image and a colorized version using the g, r, and i bands as blue, green, and red, respectively.

Edited July 21, 2016 by UmbralRaptor

[kurja]

7 hours ago, UmbralRaptor said:

"Thing on top" would most likely be a Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS, barring spending on a DSLR. As for my profile pic, it's an SDSS g-band image of a nameless galaxy at z = 0.027. Admittedly I used the Stripe 82 data instead of DR7 and messed with the contrast and image size in DS9.

Full size image and a colorized version using the g, r, and i bands as blue, green, and red, respectively.

I meant that you'll need something on top of which to put the tracking mechanism, like a sturdy tripod or such. Remember that you'll need to be able to align the whole thing with earth's rotational axis. Your camera ofc goes on top of that =)

If the specs on dpreview dot com are correct, your Canon does not allow recording raw format data, which (to my knowledge) rules out proper calibration of your data, which is a bummer =( However even without that, you should be able to at least spot multiple messier objects on your Canon if you get your tracking running nicely.

[Dartguy]

Here are a couple of recent shots.  Done with a Samsung S6 held to the eyepiece.  Just tried to get lucky and every once in a while did.

Edited July 21, 2016 by Dartguy

[cantab]

Saturn is always special. Jupiter's pretty dependable too. Mars, though ... is a pig. It only gets close for 2 months every 2 years, and even then it's hard to see surface detail unless you have like an 8 inch or larger scope.

[UmbralRaptor]

3 hours ago, cantab said:

Saturn is always special. Jupiter's pretty dependable too. Mars, though ... is a pig. It only gets close for 2 months every 2 years, and even then it's hard to see surface detail unless you have like an 8 inch or larger scope.

And you get about 3-5 good oppositions in a row (weather permitting) followed by 5-7 bad ones. This was somewhat disheartening to discover as I started to get into amateur astronomy in 2007.

 

3 hours ago, kurja said:

I meant that you'll need something on top of which to put the tracking mechanism, like a sturdy tripod or such. Remember that you'll need to be able to align the whole thing with earth's rotational axis. Your camera ofc goes on top of that =)

If the specs on dpreview dot com are correct, your Canon does not allow recording raw format data, which (to my knowledge) rules out proper calibration of your data, which is a bummer =( However even without that, you should be able to at least spot multiple messier objects on your Canon if you get your tracking running nicely.

Assuming I can stick the tracker on a small alt-as telescope mount, that won't be a problem. My Canon can absolutely shoot RAW thanks to the magic of CHDK, though that gets into what calibration tools would be needed and possible hard drive space concerns.

[kurja]

Deep sky stacker and regim are free and can calibrate raw files, there are others too. I find a project usually takes up a couple gigabytes of disk space, depending on what you're doing and with how many frames. Is the alt az motorized & goto?? because that could track too, even if there's some field rotation...

[The Optimist]

It's just a projection by NASA obviously! Wake up! The earth is flat!

OW! Geez, that was a sarcastic statement! Please stop hitting me