Nikon_Bill Loc: South Florida

I went out last night to shoot the moon and compare lenses. After the moon shot I noticed a planet to the east of the moon at about 15deg. east of it. The result on my computer was what looked like one pixel of light and the whole screen was black. When I pushed the exposure up, and the contrast, the stars began to show up, and some color clusters. Jupiter was clear and round. I was shocked at how much I was able to see from a Nikon 70-300mm VR lens when I pushed the image in Photoshop CC. Now I'm stalking Saturn.

Jupiter

dirtpusher Loc: tulsa oklahoma

it is in gemini. the brighter stars above an top right

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

Great shot! I haven't tried my sx50 on Jupiter just yet; I think I need to get a tripod first. The IS is good, but...

Based on my experience with a telescope, you should be able to get good shots of Saturn. The disk will be quite a bit smaller than Jupiter, but the rings... The rings... Please post some if you get it. Astronomy magazine, or their website, give good information each month on where the planets are located, and what time of night you need to be watching for best effect.

Nikon_Bill Loc: South Florida

It's raining last night and today, but soon I'll be stalking her. Thanks for the tip.
With the discovery of what happens to the background of moon shots when I kick up the contrast, exposure, and other adjustments, I am going back and doing it to older shots of space I made, and seeing things that only were black in the photos. It only seems to work in the NEF or raw files due to the latitude or range of info that is captured. If you shoot, be sure to to it in raw too.
I now plan to explore other areas to see if I can show any nebula, and to shoot the northern areas.

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

Nebulae would be neat - they are pretty big in area on the sky. Problem is, they are very faint, mostly. You would need to have a guided camera, or possibly take a bunch of photos and use software to 'stack' them together. Two that are probably worth trying are M42 the "great nebula", which hangs underneath Orion's belt (Orion is a winter constellation and dominates the view towards the south on winter evenings) and M31, the Andromeda galaxy. That is also visible with binoculars - or the naked eye, if your sight is good enough.

I have directions to find M31, which I find much easier than most of the books and magazines give. If you are interested drop me a PM and I will try and explain them. I don't want to bore the general populace too much!

Now that I think on it, I think I will be tackling these 2 myself this year, once I get a decent tripod.

I should warn you that the Orion nebula looks great and colourful in 'professional' photographs, but you won't see any colour without a very long exposure. It is very low saturation, to put it into more photographic terms. That is the case with most nebulae, unfortunately. The magazines are constantly printing letters from people who can't get their photos to look like those taken at big observatories.

Good luck, and please post any successes you have with them!

Nikon_Bill Loc: South Florida

The previous posts were shot at high speed as in the day time here. I was shooting the moon. I'll try some 1 to 20 second shots and see what shows up when I push it with Photoshop CC.

Thanks for the idea of stacking. I could shot three or four and stack. With 'smart sharpen', stacking, HDR, etc. I don't know which to try first. I can hardly wait. :shock:

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

A lot of astronomy photographers use stacking, because the light levels are so low. I don't know yet if PS does this, but there are programs out there which handle it well.

I just got my Astronomy mag newsletter, and I checked. Saturn is up before dawn in the Eastern sky, along with comet ISON right now. It should get earlier and earlier during the next few months until it is visible at a more sociable hour!

Algol Loc: Georgia

Nice shot, thank you for posting. But I am having a bit of a problem with the image. There appears to be a lot of background stars as well as a couple of clusters. My problem is that if this is indeed Jupiter, you should have captured some of it's four bright moons as well, usually all four are visible. When you were shooting the moon, did you see any craters in your images. Jupiter is about the same apparent size as some of the larger craters.
Jupiter is near the moon, or rather was. It is quite bright and easily seen. Look at it with binoculars and you might be able to see a couple of it's moons almost touching it. Then shoot it with a 300mm on a tripod. Try to keep your exposures short so as to prevent movement.
I have posted several of my images of nebulae, Saturn, Moon etc. have a look at them and I hope you enjoy them.
Please keep posting your astronomical images.