Tag Archives: Jupiter

Trying out the new Orion StarShoot

The following two photos of Jupiter and four photos of the Moon were taken from the sidewalk in front of my house in Crofton, MD. I used my Celestron 130 SLT, a 2X Barlow (except for one of the moon photos), a MacBook Pro (courtesy of APL) and the club’s new Orion StarShoot Solar System Color Imaging Camera IV to take these photos. The hardest part of acquiring the images was focusing, since the image bounces all over the place when you touch the focuser (or any part of the telescope, really). Adjusting the gamma level before recording was also critical for the shots of Jupiter. I used the WebCam Monitor software that came with the camera to capture movies and stills. I used the open source Lynkeos software (which also came with the camera) to stack the movie frames into a single image. The whole process was a little frustrating at first. A little patience yielded some reasonable results. Here they are.

Moon
Mare and craters on the moon. Taken through my Celestron 130 SLT with an Orion StarShoot Solar System Color Imaging Camera IV (no Barlow). Made from a stacked set of images from a movie.
Moon
More Moon mare. Taken through my Celestron 130 SLT with an Orion StarShoot Solar System Color Imaging Camera IV using 2x Barlow. One frame. No post-processing.
Moon
Highlands and a bit of mare. Taken through my Celestron 130 SLT with an Orion StarShoot Solar System Color Imaging Camera IV using 2x Barlow. One frame. No post-processing.
Moon
Craters in the mare. Taken through my Celestron 130 SLT with an Orion StarShoot Solar System Color Imaging Camera IV using 2x Barlow. Made from a stacked set of images from a movie.
Jupiter
An attempt at Jupiter through the Celestron 130 SLT using the 2X barlow and the Orion StarShoot. This is several frames of a movie stacked together plus some post-processing. My focus could have been better and Jupiter was low, so I was looking through a lot of atmosphere. This image is double the size of the original frame images.
Jupiter
Another attempt at Jupiter through the Celestron 130 SLT using the 2X barlow and the Orion StarShoot. Frames stacked, post-processed. Original size.