Rob Watson's Jupiter

Our mate Rob Watson sent in this photo that he took after reading our Facebook page on photographing Jupiter.

Rob’s telescope is a Sky-Watcher 8 inch Newtonian, which was originally on a Dobsonian mount but is now on an EQ6 equatorial mount. The camera he used was a Sbvony SV205, and he took 45 second videos to avoid a lot of the motion blur you’d get from taking longer clips with Jupiter rotating so fast.

Rob is a Mac user, which means a lot of the software he used was different to our description, as we’re Windows people. He captured the initial shots using Quicktime along with an app called Webcam Settings to tweak the exposure. He stacked the frames in Lynkeos, and then finished the image off using GIMP (which is the only app in this list I’m actually familiar with!).

He’s very pleased with the result, and also confident he can improve on this. Some of the tips he suggests are:

Shoot while the planet is higher in the sky (to minimise the amount of atmosphere the light has to go through);

Take a few different types of shots – vary the exposure, brightness and other settings – so you can choose the best once you’re inside doing the processing;

Take notes as you go so you can zero in on the best settings and processing over time.

Marvellous shot, Rob, and we're looking forward to seeing how things go next time!