Messierhunter
New member
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2008
- Messages
- 488
- Reaction score
- 2
- Points
- 0
All your works are truly great! During my sleep last night, a voice told me the following:
With your new AO-7 adaptive optics system, you are certainly the one in this forum to be able to attempt the Man and Planets challenge: with Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn!:thumbup:
Thank you! Unfortunately the AO-7 system is not well suited for that kind of challenge. You need a bright guide star to use the system, which isn't usually practical at the horizon. The window to capture a planet next to a person at the horizon at that kind of magnification is incredibly short; by the time a guide star is acquired (assuming you can find one) and the system is running the opportunity has probably passed. You're also limited to still images; you have to use an SBIG ST- camera with the system. Even my USB ST-2000XCM has a full frame download time of several seconds.
A more practical method would be to use good old fashioned "lucky imaging" techniques, but this will require compositing the stacked image onto a frame of the horizon since the planet is not stationary relative to the horizon. Atmospheric turbulence at the horizon will be quite severe though as you see in that video, so the gains from lucky imaging are unlikely to reach diffraction limits.