By Jove

A few days after taking a picture of the Moon with my telescope, I thought I’d try and get an image of a planet.

Jupiter and Saturn were visible in the sky, so I spent a couple of nights trying to grab some images.

Here is the image of Jupiter I managed to capture:

And here is the image of Saturn:

I discovered whilst taking the picture of the moon that my telescope mount tracking had failed, so I had to spend a number of hours stripping it down and getting it back up and running.  It’s working now, but it isn’t great. Time to start saving the pennies…

Both Saturn and Jupiter were quite low down in the sky and the atmosphere as very turbulent, so grabbing a steady image was a problem. 

These were taken with my DSLR attached to my telescope. I captured the images as a movie file and then used a program called a  AUTOSTAKKERT! (link) to select the best frames and stack them. I then tweaked the images in Registax (link)

They aren’t “Hubble” quality, but I’m quite proud of them!

I am going to try and keep the momentum going and take some more pictures in the near future. 

I’ve just invested in a dedicated camera for planetary imaging which I’m hoping to take out for a test drive soon. I’ll let you know how I get on.