Sad to see so many ill-informed negative comments. This is a great video, look at the banding on the planet and the clarity of the Cassini division. Not to mention this was caught with a webcam! Viva la toucam! Thanks for sharing!
This video is not fake and you would be shocked if you could see Saturn through a telescope with this kind of clarity. It's surreal. Great video and excellent image. The photoshop touch up is fantastic.
simply beautiful! :) i want to do just that with my SPC900 and C8-XLT (i don't know if i'll be able to boost it up to 3x, but i'll try my best). clear skies!
If you have the 25mm Plossl that's a good start. I use it with my 120ST and I love that eyepiece. Otherwise there are tons of 1.25 inch eyepieces on various websites. I would also recommend purchasing a 2x shorty barlow, it's a good starting piece to have and I use mine EVERY time I go star gazing. Clear skies!
Again this is an excellent live video. Also usual comments by those who do not understand how a camera works. These are the same people that mistrust the moon landing and ask why they cant see stars in the Astronauts photos taken at the moons surface. Please go take a photography and video filming course before you remark here about "disbelief" and "fake". Take an astronomy course! You will learn something for the first time in your life. I applaud the videographer here. Excellent work M Seibold
The main advantage the bigger scopes have is basically that they make things look brighter. That 70mm diameter means that really fine details basically would blur out because of the scope's limitations but the atmosphere does a similar blurring job making many large scopes see as clearly as a 3 inch one. The atmosphere is a big factor. Look when they are way above the horizon. If you wanted a bigger scope, a 4.5"(114mm) Newtonian reflector would be very good for the price.
I use long focus Barlow lenses 2x, 2.5x and 3x Barlows where the ends can be un-threaded for 1.5x. I used a Shorty-Barlow once, but found that they had slight Coma-Aberations at the edge do to their much shorter focal-length, more curved lens elements. The long 5" Barlows were excellent with NO aberations plus un-threaded barlow lens tips for 1.5x Barlows too.
At the moment we nearly see the edge of the rings so it is more difficult to see the division in the rings. With higher magnification it may be easyer but the problems with bad seeing are worse too. I think you will see the things shown in the video but it will take time, good seeing, well collimated optics and some experience.
@cp1699 Actually, it will. The video section is representative of good seeing, using a ccd with an IR/UV cut filter. The problem is that the image stack is clearly stacked from far more frames than the video but that isn't a misrepresentation.
No filter was used, because I forgot to cut a thread into the adapter of my camera. I think it would be much better to use a IR/UV blocking filter because there would be less problems with the colourbalance.
@ TheCBCStudios, the video is definitly made through C8. With modern cameras an more sensitive chips there are better Images possible as you can see on some websites. What three moons do you mean? With this camera and settings thee may be only one Titan in reach, but this moon is outside of the very small field.
@brinztar A good place to start is just to buy a Reflector telescope from eBay. You dont need anything too special to learn with . . . something around 5inch should be fine. Scopes above that start to get expensive. Try and get skywatcher / celestron / meade if you can afford it but any generic scope of above that size will do to learn with.
@Nachtwolke do you think the t-adapter will work better than the cameras you buy for the telescopes? what i plan on doing before long is switching to a lx90 12" with ACF and i got a 10 mega pixel olympus e-420, so i figured i would just get the t adapters for the meade and olympus, but im worried it will suck
Excellent video as judged by Mark Seibold, Astronomy Artist-Educator Portland Oregon. The problem with many commenters here is that they have never observed through a real telescope. They only know the TV news that they were trained to watch. These people need to get off the Internet and to their local astronomy clubs to observe live. As astronomers we revel at these comments from the newcomers who will look live in a telescope 1st time- Comment is always likely, "It's fake!" . . The poor souls.
The ToUcam was not modified. For the capturing of Planets 1/5 sec. is normaly enough. Longer exposures would give a brighter an less noisy picture, but the seeing would destroy all details.
Hi, I used only the normal focuser. If the seeing is good focusser accessories may help you, but if the seeing is bad nothing will help. So find good seeing an your pictures will be good. Last night the seeing was so bad that I could not see the two mainbelts of jupiter in my 5" refractor and thats no joke.
Excellent job! The sharpness is great. I'm trying similar feats with my 6" SCT and not getting near as much sharpness. I suspect I need very precise collimation and an electric focuser. How are you collimating?
Every brand there is. A reflector telescope is more commonly known as a Dobsonian (Newtonian Reflector Telescope) 4.5 and 5.0 inch are common entry level sizes.
@ff621 To see Saturn this way, you need an 8" telescope or larger. In the USA, $400 will get you an 8" or maybe even a 10" dobsonian telescope and 1 or 2 eyepieces. A dobsonian is about 1/2 as powerful as the scope used to make the video, but is 1/2 the price, and gives about 2x the field of view.
Hi, Giotto is a software for automatic stacking. You con find it via Google. But the problem ist that there ist no english thranslation only german. May be it ist easyer to try registax.
I just bought a Zhumell 8" dobsonian. When I look at Saturn I see no color like in your video, its just a white ball with a single band around it. I also see no division in the rings. At the moment I have only a 26mm and 9mm eyepiece and am getting a whole new kit with a barlow. Will I be able to see something on par of what you have here?
Gnarly, I owned one for a short while. It did a good job at finding and tracking objects. (sometimes not spot on, but very close) The question is, what are you looking to get out of a scope? A 4" scope of this type has a pretty good obstruction in the middle of the corrector plate. Don't expect to see much in the way of deep space objects. For planetary, doubles and lunar observations it would be fine.
@ ParaglidingManiac, if you use a normal camcorder it is not easy, the best way may be to use one of these special clamps that are avalible at some astronomydealers. Theses clamps were made to use with digitalcameras but a small camcorder should be no problem.
Hey guys, I've got a Bresser RB 60-700. Aperture: 60mm. Focal Length 700 mm. Focal Ratio is f / 11,6. What do you think I will be able to see? Maybe Saturn?
I still maintain my argument about the image. What development softwear are you using? I was photographing Saturn when it was close to the horizon at 3am in the month of July using my C8 through an Atik 314 one shot color ccd camera and Maxium XL imaging softwear, and the images come out better then those shown here. keep in mind the mount that my scope is on, the ccd camera and imaging softwear are quit expensive. I have used the Meade LPI for imaging the planets with ok results.
It's real, but may be it looks to you like a cartoon because of the low framerate. I captured this video with 5 fps to get a low compression. At higher framerates the old Toucam makes a lot of compresionarefacts.
@ h95718, it's really cool how many people think that this video is a fake. Could it be, that these people don't know anything about imageprocessing, resolution of optics and in your case dynamic range of CCDs? If the chip would have been much larger It would perhaps have been possible to capture a faint image of Titan, but the backgroundstars are much too faint to be captured with the short exposures which are needed to capture sharp images of Saturn.
Mein C8 hatte, wie alle dieser Optiken, offiziell 2032 mm Brennweite. Ein Okular habe ich nicht benutzt, wohl aber eine 2x Barlow und ein paar Distanzhülsen. Dadurch wurde der Barlowfaktor auf 3x angehoben, die Brennweite also auf rund sechs Meter verlängert. Filter habe ich keine verwendet, wobei ein IR-Sperrfilter wohl zu einer etwas besseren Abbildung im Roten geführt hätte.
dein video ist mega. hab auch eins vom saturn gemacht, aber leider ohne nachführung und ner 1,3mp logitech webcam... bin mit giotto nicht klar gekommen... hättest du mir vielleicht einen tip? danke
Hi, no I don't use an GSO ED Barlow. The one I use is an old Syntha 2x Barlow with and an extensiontube. I know that an UV/IR filter should been used to get more imagekontrast, but all these small items cost money and there is much more to pay than just my hobby.
Yeah me too especially considering people do this all the time all over the world. 8" of aperture makes for nice resolution on the gas giant planets. Stacking images ridiculously enhances signal to noise ratio.
I have a 8 " Celestron refractor.But I find it difficult to manuever because it's an equatorial mount job.I'd rather have my old smaller telescope . I would point it at say Jupiter with a 40mm eyepiece then put 20 and 10 mm eyepieces for magnification .
Where did you take this video? It's a very good seeing! I live in Italy (a shit country for doing astromomical activities) and here it's almost impossible to find a calm vision like this one. :(
Hi, it is easy to find the brighter Planets. Learn the sky by using a planisphere and you will find the "wrong" stars easily. Another way is to look for a bright star that does not show szinitllation. If you find one it may find a plant (or may be you have very good seeing)
I think the the e-420 will work fine for the moon and the sun, but a videocamera will be better if you want to shoot pictures from the planets. This is becaus you have hundreds of pictures in a videostream and these can be selected by sharpness. May be the liveview of the olympus could be recorded with a computer. In this case the results may be very similar to a videocamera.
Hi, I think you mean one of this cheap 102/1000 achromatic refractors, because a refractor with a lens diameter of 1000 mm would be a little bit expensive. ;-) With an magnification of 100x it should be no problem to see the the ring(s) but i I think that a magnifikation of more than 150x would be too much because of the chromatic aberration of the objektiv. If you can't see the rings it may be that you choosed the wrong "star".
It's pretty amazing to see how many people there are who not now that the planets are within reach if you have a telescope. As far as they are concerned, everything you see outside are stars. Little white dots. And the really bright ones are (such as Jupiter and Venus) UFO's. Glad I'm an amateur-astronomer.
yeah... You'll see the rings. There is a thin dark line near the edge of the rings in that video. That thin line might be a bit difficult to see. You could also see a few bands on Jupiter and obviously its 4 big moons. Right now, Venus would be the best planet to see. It is the brightest star-like thing in the evening sky and see for yourself. Saturn and Jupiter will be better seen in the summer(2009) because of how the planets will be positioned then.
This video was definitly made with a C8 and a ToUcam. With better cameras (and good seeing) there are even better results possible. If your C8 gives bad pictures try to collimate it and do a startest. May be one of the mirrors is pinched or you have problems with local seeing. You think I'm giving the amateurastronomers a bad name? I think the opposite is true because you call me a liar, but don't give any reason for that.
when i was little, i trade my n64 for a crappy telescope, i loved it even it took like 15 minutes to really point at some star and it would last less than 20s because of the earth movement
