| Capturing good images
of the solar system planets can be very challenging. Mercury and
Venus will show phases, but no surface detail. Every other year Mars
approaches close enough so that amateur scopes can capture some surface
detail. Jupiter and Saturn can generally be imaged with some detail,
but you need a steady atmosphere, sharp focusing and an accurate drive
to capture really high resolution images. Uranus and Neptune appear
as a tiny disk, but you can capture their moons, Pluto is now a Dwarf
Planet, but I till have some pictures taken when we called it a planet. The best you
can do with Pluto is watch it's motion against the background stars.
One easy item to image is close planetary alignments. These can usually
be photographed with an ordinary camera and tripod. Here is a page
that lists dates for some upcoming close
alignments. |
