I was recording a series of short 30s HD videos of Jupiter last midnight, in good seeing conditions, to see just how far I can push my current equipment. This small, two-frame animation is easily the best I've ever accomplished of Jupiter, thanks mainly to some basic stacking and sharpening in Registax:
![SSO_P6_Jupiter_20131220_1339-1402_UT.gif (55.49 KiB) Viewed 5542 times Jupiter, with (L-R) Ganymede, Europa (occulted in frame 1) and Io, 20-Dec-2013 13:39 & 14:02 UT.](./download/file.php?id=11775&t=1&sid=fc460e25b7d0d50f72200793673f3c1e)
- Jupiter, with (L-R) Ganymede, Europa (occulted in frame 1) and Io, 20-Dec-2013 13:39 & 14:02 UT.
Obviously, this is nowhere near the quality we
Starship passengers have become accustomed to, but I was pleased with it anyway. It was accomplished with positive lens projection through a 13mm eyepiece, pushing my little 6" f/10 SCT all the way up to about f/65, with a focal length of almost 10m. This allowed me to reach a reasonable pixel scale of about 0.23 arcsec/pixel, thus forming an image of Jupiter across 200 pixels. The pixel size on the 16MP sensor of my DSLR is an impressive 4.7 microns, but sadly, when using it as a video camera, the 2MP HD format still uses almost the whole sensor, meaning that the effective pixel size increases to 12 microns. This is why my focal ratio needs to be pushed so high.
Anyway, I've read that for good to excellent seeing conditions, one should be aiming for a pixel scale of 0.1 to 0.25 arcsec/pixel. I'm wondering if this is still a realistic target range for smaller scopes like mine, where the resolution (Rayleigh Criterion) is a modest 0.92 arcsec? With my 6" scope, could I really expect a much better image of Jupiter, if I used a video camera with smaller pixels, or would I also need to get a bigger scope to accompany such a camera?
I have been looking for a suitable video camera with small pixels, with a removable lens, and which is not too impossible to mount on a telescope without gaffa tape. Such cameras are not easy to find. But maybe the above quality is all I can expect with a 6" scope. Does anyone have any thoughts?