A-L-E-X wrote:

Source of the post Can you live broadcast the images on the web?

The cameras support it and I can access the live streams, but there isn't the infrastructure to offer than publicly.  Some cameras are at private homes with whatever internet plan the owners have, some cameras are at somewhat remote places and rely on the mobile network with a limited number of GB per months.

This is the camera that yours reminds me of, but based on your specs I think yours might be better

https://www.telescope.com/Orion-StarSho ... 101918.uts

A-L-E-X wrote:

Source of the post This is the camera that yours reminds me of

NTSC format to cover the entire sky is pretty bad.

Yes, I was originally considering it because I dont have anything that can cover the whole sky but when reading the specs I saw that the resolution would be really bad.  There are doorbell cameras that capture meteoroids that can do the job just as well.

Mid, I know earlier in the year I asked you general questions about what could be visible at various focal lengths but I wanted to get more specific.

My question is can all three of these be captured with a superzoom camera at 2,000mm EFL (Nikon P900/950.)

1)  Cassini's Division in Saturn's Rings

2)  Great Red Spot on Jupiter

3) Martian Polar Ice Cap on Mars

I think the answer is yes, they can be captured (barely) with the P900/950 at 2,000mm EFL but much more easily captured (NASA like) with the longer zoom at 3,000mm EFL with the P1000.

Here is what I've found in images with the P900/950:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... nd_transit),_Io,_Europa,_and_Callisto,_taken_with_Nikon_P900_-_2020-07-24.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... -07-24.jpg



click to expand each

This picture was taken with the P900 and shows Jupiter and it's main moons, you can see the Great Red Spot at the lower right and a shadow of Ganymede, the largest moon, on Jupiter.

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4029136

Further down in the thread my favorite Saturn images taken with the P900 from Aisse and MarioV (his was a single image unstacked, and you can make out Cassini's Division barely, but it's there.) Aisse's images of Jupiter and Saturn show the Cassini Division and Great Red Spot much more clearly (like NASA photos) but both can be captured with the P900/950 also.  Can this be backed up by mathematical calculations that prove you can see all three at 2,000mm EFL on those cameras?

And here is one I found with the polar ice cap on Mars.

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3975229

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/57390620

Mario V also includes images of Jupiter and Saturn there.

https://cochinblogs-hobby.blogspot.com/ ... t-max.html

Very descriptive features on Mars  that are captured.

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4472826

So it looks like at a minimum you need a 2000mm EFL to see the Cassini Division on Saturn's rings, the Great Red Spot on Jupiter and the Martian Polar Ice caps, but all are much more clearly visible on the P1000 at full zoom.

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64440618

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... -07-24.jpg

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4029136

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4472823

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4182798

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4275373

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64393206

https://jzholloway.wordpress.com/2020/0 ... njunction/

https://cochinblogs-hobby.blogspot.com/ ... t-max.html
https://cochinblogs-hobby.blogspot.com/ ... t-max.html

Compare this to Aisse's output of Jupiter and Saturn with the P1000

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4399770

Below are some fantastic images of planets taken with the P1000

http://tool-box.info/blog/archives/3106 ... -2020.html

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/ ... t-64398986

You can see the GRS and Cassini Division and the Martian Polar Ice Cap in the P900 shots but the P1000 is a major step up.

Note that in order to get pictures like that, you need to track the objects, record videos at manual settings and do a lot of post processing.  It's not what you get by pointing and clicking.

midtskogen wrote:

Note that in order to get pictures like that, you need to track the objects, record videos at manual settings and do a lot of post processing.  It's not what you get by pointing and clicking.

There seems to be a lot of stacking going on.  On some of the links I clicked it said the images were untracked.  One of them was even a single image (not stacked).  Here is the one
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/ ... t-58064290
He mentions that was a single shot.  
Here is untracked (or handheld?!) Mars according to this guy where you can see the Polar Ice Cap
https://cochinblogs-hobby.blogspot.com/ ... t-max.html
After analyzing them do you think that the Cassini Division, the Great Red Spot and the Martian Polar Ice Cap can all be captured with the P900/950 at 2000mm EFL but all look much better on the P1000 at 3000mm EFL?  The reason I specifically ask this is I actually have the P900 and am considering upgrading to either the P950 or P1000.  The P950 offers the same lens and same sensor, but adds RAW mode and allows longer exposures (up to 1 minute long at ISO 1600 or 30 sec at ISO 3200) while the P900 is limited to 15 sec at ISO 100 as well as allowing for 4K30 videos while the P900 is limited to 1080P60 (might be useful for stacking of planets?)  The P950 costs about $630 at various sites.  The P1000 has the longer lens (3000mm EFL), but weighs substantially more (1.4 kg vs 1.0 kg of the P950 and 0.9 kg of the P900) and has the RAW and 4K30 capabilities also (but limited to 1 min exposures at ISO 100) ands costs about $760.  I'm not sure how useful the long exposures of the P950/1000 are since I dont have tracking and I already have a mirrorless M43 camera (Olympus EM10 Mark 2) with lenses from 14mm-300mm (28mm-600mm EFL).  Anything longer than 400mm EFL would need exposures of less than one second on untracked tripods, correct?  I'm using the 400 rule.  So basically I am wondering if the upgrade to the P950 or P1000 would be worth it for me and if it is, which of those two should I choose?
I found some long exposure photography pictures of M31 and M42 and the starfield in Lyra taken with the P950 (untracked, so also following the 400 rule so all are 500mm EFL or less.)  I think I could do better than this with my mirrorless M43 set up- what do you think?
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64512537
https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64579778

I found appropriate info on all features and here is what I came up with and calculated:

I visited various sites and found figures for all three features. It is also interesting to note that Cassini's division was discovered by Cassini using a telescope with a 2.5" objective diameter at 90x magnification. The P900/950 lens has a 2.16" objective diameter and has 83x magnification. That is a pretty close match! Of course Cassini made his discovery in 1675 so this is almost 350 years later lol.

Cassini's division is 3000 miles wide

Great Red Spot is 10,000 miles wide

The Northern Martian Polar Ice Cap is 700 miles wide

The Southern Martian Polar Ice Cap is 250 miles wide.

At all of their closest approaches, Saturn is 2x farther than Jupiter and Mars is 22x closer than Saturn.

The listed angular diameter of Cassini's Division at closest approach is 0.75" (seconds of arc.)

It is about 2800x smaller than the full moon. Since the full moon also covers about 2800 pixels that means the 0.75" seconds of arc diameter of Cassini's division should cover almost exactly 1 pixel on the P900/950 at 2000mm EFL (no wonder Dynamic Fine Zoom is needed to give it more clarity- and I wonder if stacking would add to clarity.)

Based on the above numbers, Cassini's Division is clearly the smallest in terms of what it looks like from Earth. Jupiter's GRS looks about 7x wider (3.5x larger AND 2x closer) and Mars' Northern Polar Ice Cap looks 5.5x wider (22x closer makes up for being 4x smaller) while the Martian Southern Polar Ice Cap looks 2x wider (22x closer makes up for being 12x smaller).

I did some calculations using the diameter of the Martian Polar Ice Caps (north - 700 mile diameter, south - 250 mile diameter) and the GRS (10,000 mile diameter) using closest approaches of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn and setting the Cassini Division as the reference point at 3,000 miles wide and 0.75".....at the closest approach of Saturn, if the GRS was located there it would be 5,000 miles wide (using 2x closest approach distance of Saturn vs Jupiter).... so the GRS is 3.5x larger and 2x closer (which means it should have an angular diameter of 7x that of the Cassini Division when viewed from Earth) Mars Northern Polar Ice Cap although only 700 miles wide, Mars is 22x closer at both their closest approaches but only 4x smaller.....in the case of the Southern Polar Ice Cap it is 12x smaller. Even using the smaller ice cap numbers, it should have about twice the angular diameter of Cassini's Division when viewed from Earth and with the Northern Polar Ice Cap it's more like 5.5x the angular diameter of the Cassini Division.

So, in summary, if the maximum angular diameter of Cassini's division is 0.75" then Mars' Southern Polar Ice Cap is about 1.5" and the Mars' Northern Polar Ice Cap is 4" and the GRS on Jupiter is 5.25" Cassini's Division is clearly the most difficult to resolve so if it can be resolved so can the other features. If we set the width on our pictures of Cassini's Division at 1 pixel at Saturn's closest approach (at 2000mm EFL), then Mars' Southern Polar Ice Cap is 2 pixels wide and Mars' Northern Polar Ice Cap is 5.5 pixels wide and the Great Red Spot on Jupiter is 7 pixels wide at their respective closest approaches.

I see Wat in here!  Please back me up on these calculations, I want to make sure I am right about the angular diameters of these features and the order of difficulty here....and the 1 pixel width of the Cassini Division at closest approach specifically (since it should be the most difficult to resolve out of the features I mentioned) at 2000mm EFL using the Nikon P900/950.

I also performed a different calculation to recheck my earlier ones coming from the camera sensor side of things....I looked up the largest the full moon can be and it's 34.1 arc min and the EFL that fills the vertical FOV of a 4:3 sensor with the full moon of that angular diameter is 2,560mm.  Since my camera has an EFL of 2,000mm it has 1.28x less zoom.  Multiply that 1.28x times 34.1 to get the vertical FOV in arc min at 2000mm EFL and we get 43.65 arc min.  Multiply that by 60 and we get 2619 arc seconds.  The sensor's vertical dimension consists of 3456 pixels.  2619/3456 gives us 0.7578 arc sec per pixel and since the maximum arc sec width of Cassini's Division at closest approach is 0.75 arc sec, this gives us a maximum 1 pixel width for Cassini's Division at 2000mm EFL on the P900/950- I guess I was right!

Given this knowledge I am just posting the Cassini Division images, the best I could find for each camera, for a comparison:

Note: I dont know about the others, but MarioV specifically states that his images are not from video files, he uses a conventional untracked tripod and doesn't stack, the images are all single shots.

Cassini Division P900

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/58063100

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/58064290

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/62927292

Cassini Division P950

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64440618

Cassini Division P1000

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/62757097

Aisse posts even better Jupiter images later in the thread

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/62783900

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/62787293

So, I figured since it would be a while since I post another image (winter = snow = sadness), I'm making the ngc 7000 mosaic data (stacked) public for anyone to try their hands on processing monochrome narrowband data. Unfortunately it's not the full SHO, but just HOO as I ran out of time this year to get sulfur.

link to stacked panels (google drive)

good luck to anyone brave enough to attempt processing a 6 panel mosaic lol

Feel free to post the results anywhere you want, as long as you give proper credits

I was trying to catch meteors with my camera set up but since my battery died just before I saw that meteor I mentioned, what I captured instead was this- is this the Horsehead Nebula?  It must be pretty bright since these are single exposures in extremely light polluted NY (I am actually near a well lit parking lot operated by the postal service and this was taken from my 2nd floor bedroom window.

Found out this is M42 Orion Nebula!  It's always been a dream of mine to capture it! What is it going to take for me to get the kind of colors you see in space photos and from CN users? I can stack two dozen of these, would that help?

Maybe I need a tracking mount and a higher focal length too?

Do you think I should've gone longer on the shutter speed even on an untracked tripod?  At 2 sec no nebulosity was visible, at 2.5 sec I got this and I took some at 3.2 sec and 4 sec too, but some of the stars were starting to blur together.  What would you say the average star trail is in this image, 7 pixels at 1:1?

I'm no expert, but I wold say that is the Great Orion Nebula. The Horsehead Nebula would be "up" to the "left" from this view, just below the leftmost star in Orion's belt, Alnitak.

And I would wager that you would need better optics to make out the Horsehead Nebula.

Edit: Took too long to post. Again.

well I am not sure first goal should be to shoot from a much lower light polluted area, this was basically from a post office parking lot that's next to my house on long island where bright lights are beaming down constantly.  It was also shot through a closed window lol.