Imaging Jupiter And Moons (I need more focal length)

I’ve been outside just now, trying to sneak an image of Jupiter and its moons, in between the clouds and general haze here in South-East England tonight. (Isn’t it often this way? Two hours earlier, the sky was sparklingly clear!)

Anyway.. what I’ve realised is I need more focal length on the telescope, for the imaging of planets.

I put my old 6 inch Newtonian reflector onto the EQ6 mount, then added the Canon dSLR camera.

Ancient 6 inch Newtonian reflector, plus EQ6 telescope mount

It produced this image below, nicely showing three moons of Jupiter.. but no detail on the planet. The clouds must take a lot of the blame, but I see also, I need more focal length.

Jupiter And Moons (Io, Ganymede, Callisto)

The DSLR Canon camera is working at prime focus – using the telescope as its lens and nothing else.. (no eyepiece, or barlow lens etc).

Consequently, to get more magnification and fill the image field of view with the planet, I need a telescope with a longer focal length. My 6 inch (150 mm) reflector has a focal length of only about 700 mm.

(And as a PS. .  what would Galileo have given for an image of Jupiter and its moons, like this?)

So, any suggestions for a good telescope to observe the planets?

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Comet Lulin Images, Near Regulus In Leo

At last, the skies over Kent cleared last night for a few hours.  I was finally able to photograph Comet Lulin.

This is something of a relief…  

For the past three weeks, I’ve been making maps of Lulin’s projected position for literally thousands of visitors.

Lulin close to Regulus, plus "streak", Feb 27th

What if I hadn’t seen it myself?

Anyway, I have now.  :)

The image on the right shows Lulin close to the star Regulus, in the constellation of Leo.

Between them is an orange  ”streak”.  I’m not sure exactly what it was, probably an aircraft.  But it’s interesting.

(PS. It has since been pointed out… if you look carefully, you can see the periodically flashing white and double-red lights, of a high-flying aircraft)

The image was captured with my Canon 1000D dslr camera, through the ED80 600 mm focal length refractor.  

It’s a single frame of 2 minute exposure at ISO 800.

I actually took about 15 frames with different exposure times.  I shall try my hand at stacking some of the best, to see if I can produce better images after processing.

Here’s the best single frame shot of Lulin I have found, so far.  It was a 3 minute exposure.  You can see from the star shapes, there is some tracking error.  I need to work on a better North alignment of the mount.

Comet Lulin, February 27th (click for larger)