3. Planetary photography  

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    As said in the "Astro Photo 101" article, taking a shot of the moon is simple. Just a good camera and simply digicam:ing with a bird monocular or using a modern compact or DSLR and a long tele lens, some 2-400 mm on a photo tripod. Today Moon is easy accessible with large zoom compact cameras, like the Panasonic TZ30 or competing Sony/Canon cameras, having 10-20 times zoom. Some of these even have settings for up to 10 sec. 
    I have tried a Panasonic, taking some 60 pictures of the Lyrae and the Swan, but using an ordinary tripod, 2 sec exposures and moving the camera after every 6 picture, but I must admit, it was no good. But as digicam on the mentioned Heritage 114-P, with 5 sec exposures, I think it will giv usable pictures. Problem is, lack of a time-lap function, means a lot of work with the iPhone/Android app, keeping the shots going. But Moon is definely within your reach .... 
    It will not be as good as the shot at right, taken with a 900 mm long Bresser refractor telescope, but nearly. Use ISO 200 and a shutter speed shorter than 1/30 and the result should be viewable and appealing, even if using a ordinary photo tripod. This particular after some GIMP or Photoshop enhancement. 
    But the distant planets, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, there we no longer are photo amateurs, we need to be astro amateurs. 
    We need a telescope and in my experience, at least a +500 mm telescope, though there is shorter options as seen in the previous article. For this type of photo, it can be a "light weak" scope, that is, with a f-value above f-10 (length divided with main lens diameter). But we also need some form for tracking, following the object for more shots and longer exposure times. What type? Up to your choice and budget, sorry. 
    As mentioned in the "Tools" article, I have used a SkyWatcher Synscan AZ Goto, which served me good, allowing for my up to 30 sec exposures. But as mentioned, if today, I would taken the chance and gone for the mentioned Celestron 4/5SE NexStar or maybe an iOptron Smartstar Qube options, both with a so called wedge and still at reasonable prices. 
    They allow for simulated EQ mounting, allowing longer exposures than the pure AltAz mounts. As mentioned, I do not recommend a real German EQ mount as first mount, they heavier and requires 4 times the power and requires a backward spacial thinking, spoiling the fun. When I start to shooting my first pictures, the other guys is still aligning their GEMs, if at all bringing them along to our star parties. 
    With the scope in place, we now have two ways of taking the planet shots, A. with our current digi- or DSLR-camera solutions or B. with a web camera (ready-made astro webcam or home modified). 
    What best? Well, the webcams has less pixels, but fills the screen up, giving good results; the ordinary camera has many pixels, but gives generally smaller "fill", with smaller objects in the picture as result. Test the latter and feel around, if dissatisfied, go for a webcam solution. Also, search for astrophotos with webcam on the net, like this  Dutch guy and and learn. There is a lot of knowledge out there. 
    As a starter digicam:ing with a compact camera with video, as mentioned in the first article, would give a good feeling of how it works. More details about this will come, when I get this site in order. However, when doing planetary photographing, one basic recommendation: do not take pictures with higher than 4000x3000 px or avi:s with more than 640x480 px resolution. 
    Reason for this, is the prime software for processing planetary pictures, a free windows program, Registax. It will not handle larger pictures well. It do fail at time with memory or alignment errors, but it's free and if pictures in right size and not to "wobbly", that is, the object moving around to much, it can deliver some really excelent results. There are other programs, equally good. By the way, you not only can run Registax on Windows PCs', but also on Linux (maybe iOS) with Wine, and with good results. 
    OK, we have our stack of pictures. When opening Registax, you have a button, "Select", up to the left, yellowish. Press this and find the pictures you want to process in the directory window appearing, that is those of the same object. Mark them and load into Registax. If an mp4 or an avi film, chose that file type option and load that instead. 
    When done, you see the tab "Set Alignpoints" go active. Look at the picture in the right sub window. You can either view it enlarged or as "Full Image", whats best. But is there any clear recognizable distinct markings seen on the viewd photo? 
    Place the cursor on those markings and click and small red dots will appear. This marks the adjustment points Registax will join and stack our pictures after. The stacking enhance details and contrast, improving the picture. 
    When done, press the "Align" tab. Here we align our pictures, so they exactly on top of each other. We have some limiting choices, but I go the "lowest quality" 100% most of the time. When aligned, we do this limit processing on the "Limit" tab, 
    After "Limit" have runned it's course, the left process pane show a new set, "Stack" and "Save image". We chose stack and start that with the default values. Depending on the no of pictures and their size, this can take some time. I advice you to go take a cup of tea or coffee, it's ready, when ready. Particular if you process a webcam AVI film with 1000-2000 frames. 
    The step after stacking, is the "Wavelet" tab, Here we can see the result, good or bad. We also have some options, full size or whole picture above the picture window and RGB Align at right and Light and Contrast in the lower right. These are the initially most important controls. A word of caution, if you have a slow PC, using XP or less than 4 GB RAM, this area will be painfully slow, make small single changes and wait. 
    But before doing these adjustment, we review the sharpness of the picture, both in full, as in detail, so we do not have any misaligned picture parts in the compiled result. If so, above the center picture there is a box, "Realign_ with processed". When doing so, we go back to the "Align" tab. Chose given defaults all the way back to Wavelet.  If all works, we should now have a better picture, but 30% of the time, I have to start over from scratch. 
    Now, chose "Full image" and press the "RGB Align" button. There should be a red square near our object. Try to extend this, so it covers all of the object and press the "Estimate" button in the little window appearing. There is often some dislocation of red, green and blue in astro pictures, this process tries to adjust them together. 
    When good with the colors, adjusted the light and contrast on right side to wished result, then press the "Do All" box above the left adjustment pane. There is a lot other choices to do there, but learn the basics first. Better to start doing some GIMP/Paintshop magic, see the "6. Editing astro picture" piece. 
    OK, now we save our picture of the Moon, Jupiter or Saturn (or Venus/Mars ;-) and can show it to our friends, if satisfied. So, lets look some at star photographing, the "4. Astro photo 104".