Equipment needed for Planetary Astrophotography

The telescope: at least should have an opening 60mm refractor or 76mm reflector. As more bigger is the diameter better will be the pictures. The acceptable results are obtained from a 102mm refractor or 114mm, both must have a long focal length and equipped with equatorial mount.

A smaller proportion of focal length / lens diameter, means that more light is captured. This is not as important in planetary astrophotography because the planets are bodies shiny.

The equatorial mount is indispensable in astrophotography to orient correctly a telescope although the setting station is tedious (especially when the observer is a beginner) the results are far superior.

Camera: for planetary astrophotography cameras are not needed very sophisticated, even with a simple web-cam get excellent results. We recommend using those that allow manual control of things like white balance, etc. Actually, what you do is shoot a video and then with a program like Registax, proceed to stack the images so that it is a single image. The camera must be connected to a computer and it must have installed the necessary software for operation.

Astrophotography

Astrophotography is the art of photographing objects found in the universe. This practice attracts many people to buy a telescope and get their own images.

Inside astrophotography can be found two arms: a world in which images are obtained for objects in the solar system (except Uranus and Neptune) and Deep Space. The elements and techniques required for each of these are different.

The less equipment you need is the planetary astrophotography. Since a simple web-cam is possible to obtain good results.

There are some terms that we must become familiar, as the magnitude, the apparent disk and seeing.

Mag: refers to the magnitude of brightness. The scale ranges from -30 to +30, the brightest are those located in the -30 while the less bright in the +30. The Sun has a magnitude of -26.8, -12.6 Moon, Venus -4.4, Saturn 0.5.

In an urban sky objects you can see is up to 3.5 magnitude.

To locate fainter objects will require special software that helps locate the telescope in that direction.

Angular size (or apparent disk) is used to determine the apparent size of a given object. For example, if you look at first sight the moon is larger than Jupiter, but that planet is much larger than the satellite.

The measure used is called degrees, minutes and seconds of arc according to the size of the star. For example, Neptune is 2.5 arcsec while the Orion Nebula M42 has 48 minutes of arc (this is a significant size).

The seeing, there is turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere. This is a very important factor to consider when making a good photograph. When the magnification used is low this effect is not as noticeable but it increases the condition of seeing will have effects that can make an object appear very blurry. This effect is less evident when pointing the telescope at the highest part of heaven. It is recommended that shooting stars are in the highest part of heaven that no harm seeing the picture.