Astrophotography advice please

Already looking forward to this year’s summer holiday – in a relatively Moon-free fortnight – and a chance to get the telescope out.

Last year I shocked myself with this:

Jupiter, 9 August 2012

– produced by just pointing the second-hand DSLR at the eyepiece. This year I want to go better but don’t want to spend a fortune either (ie., I am not buying a thousand quid camera).

I have read webcams are the way to go – can anyone offer some advice on how this all should work?

Related articles

• #Get# : 1.25″ Orion Astrophotography Flip Mirror (weakmm7es.wordpress.com)
• Adapting A Camera For Astrophotography (photofunblog.wordpress.com)
• Astrophotography By Thomas O’Brien (oddstuffmagazine.com)
• Orion Min-EQ Tabletop Equatorial Telescope Mount (orionmineqtabletopequatorialtelescopesale8q.wordpress.com)
• Luckiest Photo Ever: The Moon, Jupiter … and More (universetoday.com)

The Great Red Spot

I have adjusted the contrast and brightness on the photograph to make the Great Red Spot a little easier to discern here.

Jupiter, last night

I took this photo of Jupiter at about 3am BST last night but only looked at it this morning and was amazed to see that it was good enough to show the two main gas bands on the planet’s surface. And, believe it or not, if you look closely at the picture at full magnification (click on it below), you can see the Great Red Spot (in the bottom right quadrant). I didn’t even notice this visually.

I just pointed my Canon EOS 20D at the eyepiece of the telescope, so getting anything at all was a bonus.

Jupiter, 9 August 2012

If other planets were as close as the Moon

This video shows what the planets would look like if they were as close as the Moon.