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Planetary Mode - Possible to do something less than 5x?


mr.griggs

Question

Hi everyone,

 

I'm currently imaging with an Orion ED80T with a focal length of 480mm.  Obviously, trying to image the moon in planetary mode at 5x doesn't give me adequate room to frame the entirety of the moon.  That said, is there any way to effectively zoom to something less than 5x and get a better image than if I captured at full scale?  The moon is frustratingly small in that FOV, and, after shelling out a lot of cash for the scope plus the necessary accessories for DSO imaging, I'm not really in the market for a tele-extender or a focal reducer, either of which could understandably help with 1x or 5x, respectively.

 

Can I just zoom in slowly on the live view until the moon is appropriately framed and then grab that?

 

Thanks in advance!

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7 answers to this question

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No, not possible.  The camera only provides 5x and 10x.

 

In fact you do NOT want to use anything else other than 5X for planetary recordings.

 

It is impossible to get better resolution in any other mode other than 5X.  This is because 5X provides a 1:1 (or very close) pixel resolution.  Meaning 1 pixel on the sensor = 1 pixel on your image. 

 

Anything else other that 1:1 pixel resolution and you will lose quality big time. 

 

People often think that digital zooming provides better resolution and it does not :(

 

Hope this helps,

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OK, thanks for the quick response!  Do you have any guidelines on the max focal length that will work well on the moon (assume full disk - I know I can kinda cram a crescent into 5x at 480mm if I orient the camera juuuuuust right) with 5x?  I've got a junky 75-300mm zoom and a 135mm prime L glass, so I'm trying to decide which to try and plan based on that.

 

Appreciate the software and all you do to support it!

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The 5X zoom capability for Planetary image capture is a feature of the camera that BYE uses. So, the short answer to your question is no, not really.

 

The adjustable zoom that you asked about can be easily accomplished during post processing.

 

There are 4 altermatives that come to mind...

 

1) Bite the bullet and get a high quality Barlow

2) Use eyepiece projection with some type of zoom eyepiece (I have no experience with this one, but it may be a possibility). Obviously some hardware may be required.

3) Capture and process at 1X and upscale in post processing,

4) Capture and process at 5X, capturing as many AVI files as it takes to capture the entire lunar surface and assemble as a mosaic. This requires software to assemble the mosaic.

 

I have used option 4 for capturing both lunar and solar images.  I was pleased with the results.  I captured with BYE, stacked each 5X AVI file with RegiStax and created the mosaic with Registar.  Registar is not free but does a really good job. You should look into it.

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The 5X zoom capability for Planetary image capture is a feature of the camera that BYE uses. So, the short answer to your question is no, not really.

 

The adjustable zoom that you asked about can be easily accomplished during post processing.

 

There are 4 altermatives that come to mind...

 

1) Bite the bullet and get a high quality Barlow

2) Use eyepiece projection with some type of zoom eyepiece (I have no experience with this one, but it may be a possibility). Obviously some hardware may be required.

3) Capture and process at 1X and upscale in post processing,

4) Capture and process at 5X, capturing as many AVI files as it takes to capture the entire lunar surface and assemble as a mosaic. This requires software to assemble the mosaic.

 

I have used option 4 for capturing both lunar and solar images.  I was pleased with the results.  I captured with BYE, stacked each 5X AVI file with RegiStax and created the mosaic with Registar.  Registar is not free but does a really good job. You should look into it.

Oooooh...mosaic!  Why didn't I think of that?  I could easily do quadrants based on what I observed at 5x on a gibbous moon last week.  Great suggestion - thanks!  At least it's a good project to tide me over while I wait for the moon to leave my evening sky (and hopefully for it to warm up a bit).

 

Thanks again!

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3) Capture and process at 1X and upscale in post processing,

BYE doesn't support a 1x Planetary Mode for a very Important Reason:  DSLR Video at 1x is a mess resulting from the need to Interpolate down from 5184x3456 to 1920x1080 - that means merging a 2.7x2.7 grid of pixels into a single recorded pixel (simply throwing away all that detail).  There is no 1920x1080 Center Crop mode for Video, nor even a 1280x720 Center Crop.  That is where the 5x Zoom LiveView 1024x680 comes in - that is truly a "near" 1:1 ratio of the selected Cropped Region of the Sensor.

 

To do the same in 1x, you'd need to resort to BYE's "Image Capture - Looping" of numerous short Exposures - and suffer the delay of Individual Downloads between each Frame captured; then use your Image Processing App to Develop and Convert to TIFF; and then Drag/Drop these into AutoStakkert2 or RegiStax6 in order to perform "Video" Stacking of the Still Frames.

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