Jupiter on night sky

I'm on vacations on Atlanta and just noticed that we have Jupiter in the horizon showing 3 moons with standard binoculars, I'm carrying

my standard nikon d3000 with my 200mm lens, I've never tried to shoot stars before, what would you say it would be a good composition

so I can probably zoom it enough via software and get some nice spots of Jupiter and it's moons?

<p>I have tried taking shots of Jupiter with a 300mm lens on a tripod. The result needed a lot of cropping and shows the planet's disk and moons but no detail. Others might have done better!</p><div></div>

Thanks Colin, I don't think I will be able

to get any details at all with my 200mm

lens, but I would like to achieve

something similar to what you did...

Can you share what was the speed,

aperture and ISO u used for this shot?

 

Thank you in advance, the pic is great

btw

<p>Last night it was clear and I was wondering at the brightness of something up in the sky as I was driving back from St. Louis.</p>

<p>If it clears up any day now, maybe I'll try out my 400mm on an APS-C body. Move over, Galileo!<br /> Thanks for the jog.</p>

<p>I think that shot showing the planet's disk and moons is probably somewhat out of focus. The moons will never show as disks with any photographic telephoto lens and Jupiter itself is probably showing a larger "disk" because of extreme overexposure. However you should be able to resolve the disk of the planet with a 300mm lens. With the right exposure you may catch some detail on Jupiter, but that exposure will be too brief to show the 4 major moons.</p>

<p>The disk will be largest on January 5th 2014 when Jupiter will be at opposition (closest to earth and opposite the sun), though the change in disk size is small and slow for Jupiter so it will be a good target all Winter.</p>

<p>I have some notes on planetary photography using telephoto lenses here: <a href="http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/tutorials/astrophotography2.html">http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/tutorials/astrophotography2.html</a></p>

<p>Below is a composite shot with a short exposure for the planet and a longer exposure for the moons blended into one image. 1000mm lens (500mm + 2x), 1/50s at f9, ISO 400 for the planet. Not sure what exposure or ISO I used for the moons. You do need fairly short exposures to prevent trails. Maybe faster than 1/4s for a 300mm lens, faster than 1/20s for a 1000mm. Again the moons are not resolved and any appearance of a disk is an illusion. You can see two equatorial bands on the planet.</p>

<center><img src="http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/tutorials/astrophotography/jupiter_moons.jpg" alt="" /></center>

<p>Hi Jesus, you should obviously go with Bob's aperture/exposure/ISO settings as a guide. You can see in my shot the planet and moons are overexposed. Bob - nice. I must get my telescope out for a more serious attempt!</p>

<p>Thanks Bob.</p>

<p>But it's still cloudy here :(</p>

<p>The current preferred technique for planetary photography is to shoot multiple images and combine them. Sometimes video is used and as many as 2000 or more images are sorted for sharp frames and then stacked using software like RegiStax or AviStack. Sometimes telescopes with attached webcams are used.<br>

<br>

Most of the good amateur planetary images you see these days are the result of a lot of frames and a lot of image processing.</p>

Thank you all for your posts.

Unfortunately today it's rainy here. I will

try and post my best shot with what I

have handy, I really don't expect much

detail but at least something similar to

what I get with my 15x70 Binoculars

which is a big bright spot and 3 smaller

dimmer ones...

 

Let's see how it goes. Bob thanks a lot

for ur comments I'm enjoying a lot the

article!

<p>You may see anything from 0 to 4 moons depending on whether they are in front of or behind jupiter. Typically you should see 4, though 3 isn't unusual. For a couple of hours on Dec 31st, only two moons will be visible.</p>

<p>See <a href="http://www.shallowsky.com/jupiter/">http://www.shallowsky.com/jupiter/</a></p>

<p>Wow, that Java app is awesome !, Thanks Bob, I already bookmarked it !...<br>

Is there any GNU Software that you know for overlapping sky images that I could start with? I am feeling really attracted to Sky Photography... This is really something !</p>

<p>I suppose GIMP is the best image processing software for GNU. Not sure exactly what its capabilities are these days but I'm sure you can add and subtract images.</p>

<p>Most astronomy image processing freeware tends to be Windows based (e.g. Registax).</p>

<p>I don't know if you could use a Windows emulator on GNU (e.g. Wine) and get Registax to work.</p>