Scott's Fly Fishing and Astronomy Site

I took advantage of our first clear night in a long time to try shooting the moon with my Olympus D-360L (inexpensive!) digital camera.  I ended up taking over 150 pictures (many with the sequence mode turned on for bursts of 4-5 pictures), and a few turned out!  This was simple, yet ground-breaking for me in this aspect of the hobby of astronomy.  The telescope I used was my 80 mm Orion refractor f/11.5 with a 13 mm Naglar eyepiece.  I simply held the camera up to the eyepiece.  Please see the results taken on January 28, 2002 below:

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New Photos March 2004

This is still over-exposed as you can't see the surface detail I was able to observe visually though the eyepiece.  However, moons of Jupiter are evident above and below the planet. Also, I was pleased by the crispness of the planet's disk.   I used AstroStack to collect 4-7 images of the planet and process to enhance the image.  To be honest, it didn't improve the best single image I managed much. However, if I could properly reduce the brightness, I'm sure AstroStack would help with bringing out the surface detail.

  Saturn!  This is the best image of Saturn for me to date.  Like Jupiter, this image is still over-exposed and the detail on the rings are not evident.  However, I was pleased to get a much clearer view of the rings in this image over my past attempts.  Visually, Saturn was very crisp on this night! (March 10, 2004).

  This image of Saturn like the two above are shot with my Olympus D-360L held up to the 13 mm Naglar eyepiece.  

  Got the whole thing in the frame!  (click to enlarge)

  Another (clearer?) full moon picture.  These two were done using the sequence mode of the digital camera. (click to enlarge)

  Even when I didn't line up the camera exactly with the eyepiece, the shots partially turned out.  The fog rolled in and acted as a natural filter.  (click to enlarge)

  A similar shot taken of a different part of the moon.  (click to enlarge)

I woke up on Saturday morning to take a peek at the planets above.  I ended up taking a couple of pictures of them with my inexpensive digital camera.  My photography needs a lot of work, but these are the first that I can actually tell it is a planet!

Saturn pictures

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Fuzzy, but heck you can see the rings.  This is taken through a 13 mm Naglar (145x) and a negative density lunar filter and a blue filter stacked to cut down on the light.

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I removed the lunar filter for this shot.  Still at 145x

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Again, without a lunar filter. 

Jupiter shots.

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This shot of Jupiter is way over exposed.  I'm not a photographer and can't figure out the exposure settings.  However, it is clearly a disk!  Looks like IO showed up as a disk also (upper left).  This is at 145x

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Darn it!  I wish I hadn't wiggled.  This is the clearest shot of Jupiter I've taken.  Note the cloud band evident? 

These pictures were taken with an inexpensive Olympus Camedia D-360L 1.3 Megapixel camera.  I hand held the camera to the eyepiece.