This unimpressive specimen is the planet Jupiter and its largest moon Ganymede (dull fuzzy thing in the bottom left). It’s pathetic but it’s the first time i’ve gotten anything even remotely usable. It’s a single frame extracted from a wobbly video taken after the spacex launch around 3 am march 2 2019.
I know it’s ganymede by reference to javascript jupiter animation of the system at the same time. The reason my image is tilted is that I’m tilted by virtue of being down at 27 degrees latitude.
This is an image from a nikon forum. It was taken at ISO 400, f8 1/2 second. The recommendations on the forum was to go down to 1/100 of a sec at f7 ISO 400 and try lower ISO’s.
They ref this page for an example and quote settings of 1/200th @ f6.5 ISO100 at 357mm(which is not very zoomed). That image shows a decent (small) image of jupiter but no moons.
People do stack videos to enhance them but i don’t think my starting quality is worth the trouble. My main problem is that i was wobbling all over the place trying to center the planet. My tripod is light and at full zoom the heavy lens is unbalanced and causes a droop. I have a better mount coming today so i hope to try again tomorrow night.
I’m going to try for some still images at ISO 400, f8, 1/2 sec and go down from there all the way to 1/200 f6.5 ISO 100 less zoom and then i’ll try a minute of video at various zooms – this all hinges on being able to center and hold the planet.
Plan A:
As much zoom as I can
ISO f-stop shutter
400 f8 1/2
1/10
1/100
f7
200 f8 1/100
100 f6.5 1/200
a minute of video
less zoom and repeat
Astrophotography Newbie 