Starlog March 27th, 2023, 8:15 p.m. local time
It was finally time to photograph Venus once again, close up. Over the past several years I have posted Venus “cameos” where the planet was a dot in the sky, maybe next to the Moon, for example. But here, finally, I used my Mak-Cass to pinpoint on Venus and nothing else.
This session was horribly tough. There was simply no way I was going to be able to “nudge” the telescope to string together a few minutes of video with identical focus. My smaller telescope is harder to make those necessary manual adjustments. Plus, I am not used to photographing planets so low in the sky. Hopefully I will have opportunity to leverage my Dobsonian, which is what I have been using for Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. I think I will get at least slightly better results with the big scope.
Fortunately, the Moon was out, though high overhead and nearly impossible to find near Zenith with the Mak-Cass’s tripod. But I did manage to find the Moon once, and once was all I needed to focus the telescope and camera.
The final result is still better than I anticipated.
Equipment Used:
- 127mm Mak-Cass telescope
- Camera: Canon EOS Rebel SL3
- Barlow: TeleVue Powermate x5 1.25″
- Filter: Baader Neodymium 1.25″
- T ring and adapter
- Relevant camera settings:
- – ISO 400
- – Exposure: 30
- – HD video at 60fps
- Created from one video about 20–25s, best 35% of frames (via Autostakkert)
- Software for post-processing:
- – PIPP
- – Autostakkert
- – Registax 6 PaintShop Pro for minor touch-ups
- – AfterShot Pro
