I'm relatively new to this astrophotography stuff and i tried to take a picture of jupiter. though, its kinda blurry (?) no matter how i adjust my camera. how do i fix that, is there a specific focal length thingy i need to take better pictures of the bigger stars/planets? i'm using a 420 to 800mm lens on a canon eos camera. help!
thank you all! i now know that i was just being kinda dumb and uninformed. i'll look for nebulas and star clusters to shoot instead for now :D
Turn your rig that you have to focus on deep space objects instead of planets. There are a ton of galaxies and nebulas that you can photograph that will get absolutely extraordinary results. Search for DSO Astro photography. I’ve spent the last five years with the rig that you described, and I’m still finding new objects to photograph.
If you are using one of those 420-800 cheap super zooms, they are horrifically bad. Terrible optical quality. Don't use it. You're not going to be able to get a good picture of Jupiter with it. It needs to be manually focused too (even a lens with autofocus almost always needs to be manually focused for astrophotography).
Just out of curiosity, how much do much do you know about photography in general? I ask because saying "focal length thingy" makes me assume you are very new. Jumping straight into astrophotography with a DSLR/mirrorless camera without a basic understanding of how your camera works will lead to a lot of frustration. Knowing the basic terms will make searching and asking for help much easier.
Photos of planets require a telescope with a large aperture and a dedicated planetary camera. As mentioned, you take video. However, raw, high frame rate video is the key part there. Most DSLR/Mirrorless cameras can't do that, hence the need for a planetary camera.
Edit: And by aperture I mean diameter, not aperture as it is normally used in photography, which is actually the f/ number.
i had my camera for like 5ish months i think, i just do this casually which probably does make me a tad dumber sounding. i know how most of the buttons work but forget the words for some parts. lens, focal length, apeture and so on.
but yeah it is one of those cheap ones off of amazon or something.. i will look into buying a better one in the future, but for now this is just a hobby with a cheap lens. there is good choices for a canon eos 4000d, right?
Yes. Anything for EF or EF-S mount will work. But, none that will allow you to take decent photos of planets.
In planetary, you need to take a large number of frames (thousands) and then stack and sharpen them in post to reduce the effect of atmospheric seeing.
The optimal equipment for this is a high speed USB camera that can transfer uncompressed video.
Example: single frame (red channel from a mono camera) and stacked images (left: single RGB stack of 1500 frames, right: 40 stacks derotated)
Stars are always points of light with no surface features. Disregarding seeing, amateur telescopes are an order of magnitude too small to resolve stars.
Planetary photography is not really photography. It is best done with video, where software can then analyze the individual frames and pull out the best ones to stack together and create an image. This reduces the impact of atmospheric shimmering while still allowing for longer (combined) exposure times - many very short exposures of individually high quality get combined to create the finished product. One image taken with a still camera will almost certainly be somewhat blurry.
It also helps to have a large aperture telescope with a long focal length if you want to resolve any detail, as well as a good tracking mount to eliminate motion in the video frame. A DSLR and lens is not really a suitable setup for planetary photography. I would suggest 2000mm as a good starting point, but longer is better for planetary.
alright, thanks! i was wondering why it could take a decent picture of the pleiades but not the planets. does this apply to bigger stars such as betlegeuse and sirius too? those also come out blurry.
Jupiter is very small in angular size, even though it's bright. At 800mm it only covers a tiny number of pixels, so there is almost no resolution available to show surface detail. You will only get a bright, featureless disk or dot. To see Jupiter's cloud bands at all, you generally need well over 1500 mm of focal length, and more realistically 2000-3000 mm or more. The large, detailed images people are used to seeing are typically taken at 4000 mm or greater with telescopes.
Atmospheric effects also matter much more for planetary. In deep-sky imaging the atmosphere causes some softening, but as the objects are much larger in size you feel like you get more detail. With planets, you are trying to resolve extremely fine detail on a tiny target. That's why planetary imaging uses high frame rates and stacking thousands of frames to capture the short moments of good seeing.
If it was just planets then I’d see what the guy above said regarding taking a video
But if it’s all bright objects then maybe something to do with your lens
If the Pleiades are in focus then the other stars should also be
Are you sure your focus is good? That’s often tricky if you are doing it manually
Post some examples of the blurriness
dont really have many in my gallery atm but heres a betlegeuse (i know its weirdly off to the corner) and the jupiter with its moons. i think this counts as blurry, maybe this is normal. forgive me if it is! i REALLY hope these links work haha https://imgur.com/a/5jGPFaJ https://imgur.com/a/KXT9omB
Imgur banned in this country so someone else might have to help you - but, from your words - the corner of lenses is often where they lose sharpness and if you are in focus enough to get jupiters moons then how blurry can it be ?
i do have the moons but they 'arent sharp enough', i think im just expecting too much from a camera with a cheap lens, sorry. i thought if i can see the moons i should see jupiters stripes rather than a green/pink(for some reason???) glowing dot. and thank you for telling me about the corner part i thought it didnt really matter at first °°
Jupiter is much brighter than the moons. If you correctly expose for Jupiter, you won't see the moons, and if you correctly expose for the moons, Jupiter will be a bright white blob. If you want both in one picture, you have to make a composite (even with good equipment).
Use a live stacking app like Sharpcap 4.1 Pro
Larger lens (telescope)
Sharper lens (telescope)
ADC
Video stacking and sharpening
Better Seeing