Sweetman Astrophotography

I’ve never really attempted serious planetary or lunar photography before, and my setup isn’t really optimal for it. Everything is reversed from deep sky photography. Instead of short-ish focal lengths, long exposures, dark skies, and careful guiding; for lunar or planetary photography skies don’t matter, guiding isn’t necessary, focal lengths need to be really long, and exposures short.

Since it was full and a lunar occultation of Mars, I decided to do the best I could with what I have. Below is a photo of my setup. An 8″SCT, on a Celestron AVX mount gives a focal length of around 1280mm, probably about a 1/2 or 1/4 of what would have been ideal. This is a reasonable setup for smallish nebulas and galaxies though, which is what I usually use it for.

I decided to go with a time lapse video. I was lucky enough to capture a plane in one of the images, which you can see above. Video is below….enjoy!