Need help with Afocal photography

[moxican]

I really need advise on this please. I spent several nights out but still not getting anywhere. I'm trying to get some nice shots of Jupiter. Or even shooting a vid. When I hook up my Canon Powershot SX130 IS to my 6" refractor with EQ motorized mount, I end up taking blurry pics. I put the rig together on my balcony as I live on the fourth floor and getting it down and up is quite a work. Whenever I use anything over 80-100 magnification I see heat waves on the picture. And my cam amplifies this GREATLY. So the pics that I end up taking always blurry. Would it make a big difference if I take it down to a park? Cause if this is the only reason then I just have to do it.
I've read a lot about afocal but somehow I still can't get it all work. I have an ok mount for the cam and everything. I'd be very grateful for any feedback

[skinnyonce]

I havent done much myself but I do like to practice , Are you able to shoot a pic of "say a street light or lighted sign,( from a great distance) with any luck, this may help with weight balance issues,, as well as exposure times etc etc .. and yes the heat vapors would probably be fighting you all the way..how about the moon is there any luck there for pics, are you using a camera holder ?, are you dewing up and not seeing that,,

Just trying to help,

[jenniferchristine]

The heat wobbles do make for a blurry pic.
If you are filming over a house or car park shortly after dark, you'll get stacks of it.
If you film at midnight, it'll be far less - also try to take your pics when the object is over 70 above the horizon at least 30 minimum or there's just too much atmosphere inthe way and a lot of it close to the ground too ! which is the worst stuff.

Don't forget that registax will average a lot of the pics and it they're a lot different, it'll make blurs of the altered distortion

[sxinias]

Sharp, well-focused, photographs of planets taken with digital cameras (point and shoot, DSLR, etc.) are difficult to do because they capture all the effects of the earth's swirling atmosphere. For planets a web camera is better; 30 frames per second, then stacked.

[jimt]

You are going to need to get out of the building to get a good pic. Especially if your side of the building faces south or west. It will catch the heat from the evening sun and release it during the night to the atmosphere. You see this as the heat waves you are talking about. Try it in the park.

Jim

[moxican]

Well First of all. Thanks for all the replies. Now taking pictures of street and stuff is no problem. I did take shots of the moon too, same thing happened. If I remember good the shutter sped was 1/8 sec. Way too long for heat wobbles. So in return the moon pic was blurry too. I have a home made mount for the cam and scope, as well I set delay for 10 sec. The cam is not shaking at all by the time shutter opens. About dew, I checked it, and I don't think you can't be dewed for 3-5 hours in summer.
Yes I kinda figured that registax isn't gonna help me much in this manner. Since it's a 12.1 megapixel cam, wwould it work if I take pics on a lower mag and then zoom and crop in photoshop and then stack?
My balcony is facing south. But now that you say it makes difference in a park I'll give it a shot. Hopefully grass isn't gonna radiate heat that bad. I also realized that the camera amplifies the heat wobbling too. Truth that I was zoomed in a little bit, but on screen it wobbles more them when I look into the eyepiece.
The pic you see as my avatar was taken with this same cam only it was a high-def (720p) 1 min video and then stacked in registax.

[jd_astro]

Lots of good advice here. For sure you will get better images from your balcony in the winter, since the heat from the building and parking lots will dissipate sooner. But then be sure to give your scope an hour or so to adjust to the cool environment. And check out seeing by doing a star test. Damian Peach with his 14 inch SCT gets some of the best images of Mars and Jupiter I have ever seen but only when seeing is good. I live just 3.5 degrees south of the equator, and my observing site is on top of the apartment building. Lots of heat waves and wind most every day and it doesn't stabilize till late in the evening. Even then, below 50-60 degrees altitude nothing comes out too well. I get best video/images of the planets when they are high in the sky - difficult to do from a balcony. Good luck lugging that scope up and down to the park!

[moxican]

Got another question though. Is it better to zoom more with the scope then the cam or the other way around? I mean for avoiding heat wobbles and still getting good images. I did some research on the internet but I didn't find anything to help.

[jd_astro]

The advantage of using a camcorder is the zoom. Tracking on my system has seldom been great. So the image moves around a lot but slowly. Usually I am correcting it manually with a hand control, bumping it up or down every 5-20 seconds.

If I lose the image when clouds pass by, obscuring the planet for 5-10 minutes or longer, all I need do is un-zoom until the planet appears again on the video screen, re-center it and zoom in again.

If Ihave a tight field of view in the eyepiece, I have to try to re-center the planet using the finder and probably changing eyepieces. That might involve removing the camera as well. So it is much easier to get a good tight image in a wide field of view and zoom with the camcorder. If you can, try to pipe the image from the camcorder to a larger screen, type 7" or larger monitor - into your computer for example - so you can focus as well as possible(the scope, not the camera).

My set-up is usually a 32mm Nexstar plossl + ultima 2x barlow on either my 2000m f/10 SCT or my 1250mm F/10 SCT. Mars is so small I could use a 15mm plossl + 2x barlow.

Perhaps more information than you can use - but parts of it may help you.
When you use a camcorder, the general rule is to focus the camcorder at infinity. But if you can get the image to fill a good part of the screen, u can try autofocus. I also use the cam's stabilization feature. I set LCD Brightness to the lowest setting since somehow that matches what I will see on the computer monitor.

[moxican]

I just got my Canon SX130 IS hacked and now it yields a max of 2048 exposure times. Should I be considered about the temperature of the CCD chip? The max exposure that I have taken with it was 80sec. For that the chip temp jumped up from 46c - 47c. Is there a max temperature for the chip I should watch out for? I mean I know about the hot pixels and stuff, but here I'm worried about damaging the cam.