What do you need to photograph planets?

Wednesday 8 July 2020, 15:51 by Nando Harmsen | 10,030 views | 2 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

They move through the night sky and are in a slightly different place every night, the wandering stars, or planets. They are often incredibly bright and immediately stand out.

At dusk, we can see Venus as the evening star or morning star, and sometimes Mercury if we know where to look. During the rest of the night, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn may be visible in the sky.

The other two planets in our solar system cannot be seen with the naked eye.

This is how I photographed the planets Venus and Jupiter in 2015. This is how we photographers get planets in our photos. If you want more than this, watch the video below to see what you need.

Photographing the planets is easy. They appear as bright stars in the photo. That looks great as an extra detail in a landscape photo. But it becomes very different when we actually want to photograph the planets up close.

A telephoto lens is often still too short for that. If we want to do this, we will need to use a telescope.

Voyager 2 took this photo of Saturn in 1998. We will never manage that. (credit NASA)
In this YouTube video by AstroBackyard, Trevor Jones shows how he takes his first photos of the planet Saturn. You know, that beautiful ringed planet that we normally only know from NASA's photos.

Step by step, Trevor explains how he works, with some help from Dylan O'Donnal, who is more experienced in this kind of photography. He uses a Celestron Edge HD11, a 2800mm f/10 telescope with a diameter of no less than 11 inches (approximately 28 cm), and a ZWO ASI290mm mini camera.

They took 1,500 exposures, of which the 200 best were used for the final photo.

It is an interesting video with lots of useful information for anyone who wants to get started or is thinking about learning more about this kind of photography

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