Astrophotography Adventure (cont'd) – Getting Better
I was pretty happy with my last attempt at astrophotography using my iPhone through the Starblast 4.5. There were still some focus issues but using the low boost on ISO in NightCapPro really helped improve the photos I got of the Moon. So it was back out for another attempt – this time I was not only going to image the Moon but also see how this new set-up would work on Jupiter. Well, I am really pleased with what I got – so happy I even tried a little post-processing with GIMP. I only used the Brightness/Contrast, Curves, and Unsharpen Mask features for processing. Here are a couple of Moon shots with ISO probably all the way down to 32 and exposure time of around 1/200. Unfortunately, it looks like there was a little dust on the iPhone lens on the Moon shots. The original image is on the left and the post-processed image on the right:
And here is another set:
And I’m also really pleased with how the pictures of Jupiter turned out. Using the Low ISO Boost and setting the exposure time of about 1/50 to 1/80 second worked out very well. Additionally, I used the NightCapPro magnification to increase the size of the image. Again, the original is on the left and the processed image on the right. If you look carefully, you can also just make out one of Jupiter’s moons to the right of the planet in both these photos:
All these photos were taken using the 7.5mm eyepiece with a 2x Barlow on the Starblast 4.5 inch, giving a magnification of just under 140x. If you want to know the equipment I am working with, you can read all about it in my original astrophotography post here. Now that I’ve become more familiar with NightCapPro, I think the next step is an attempt at Saturn, which is not as bright an image as the Moon or Jupiter; that will probably mean more tweaking the settings on NightCapPro. I’d also like to try to capture M42, the Orion Nebula, as that will test out the High ISO Boost and 15 or 20 second exposures. We’ll see how those come out in future posts…