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In Spring 2004 I made my first attempts in using my video camera to do planet imaging.
When I started to do astrophotography in 1983 planet photography was not something an amateur would have considered to be a rewarding effort. Limited to the use of fine-grain, low sensitive B&W film, exposure times of at least 1 second were necessary to capture the tiny planetary discs on silver chloride. Given the necessary magnification, any detail that was captured in the first tenth of a second, was erased by air turbulences in the second tenth. And even if the air had been stedy in the third tenth, the fourth and fifth could have spoiled the exposure.
Affordable video technology and computer assisted editing changed the world of planetary imaging in the 90ies. Video chips were sensitive enough to capture the reasonably bright planets 25 times a second and free software helped to select the sharpest images and stack them in order to improve the sgnal-to-noise ratio.
So what I tried to do in my very first attemts was afocal projection technique, which is nothing else than mounting my video camera to my 8" scope equiped with a 15mm eyepiece, darting at the planet and finding the right camera settings. At the second evening (the first was reserved for experimentation and trouble shooting) I made some videos which actually ended up in pictures which were much better than I was daring to hope in the beginning.
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Jupiter  Size: 29 KB Lens: 2000 mm / 15 mm / ~ 20mm (afocal projection) Film: Mini-DV Filter: none Exposure time: 25 pics/sec Location: 16°24' E, 48°10' N Time / date: 20:52 / Apr.07th, 2004. |
Saturn  Size: 30 KB Lens: 2000 mm / 15 mm / ~ 20mm (afocal projection) Film: Mini-DV Filter: none Exposure time: 25 pics/sec Location: 16°24' E, 48°10' N Time / date: 21:37 / Apr.07th, 2004. |
Please keep in mind that astrophotography is
a hobby that demands a lot of money and even more time and effort. So I
have to state that the copyrights for all of these pictures are reserved.
In case you'd like to use our pictures for more that just watching them,
please send me an e-mail-message and ask for
permission.
Thank you.
Link to Video Processing Software:
Giotto
If you should have found a broken link or suggest other recommendable sites related to video astronomy, please let me know.