Planet Parade Tonight! May 14, 2014

Look for these tonight: Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Moon (Earth's natural satellite). Look down at your feet to include the Earth.

Will be great fun for planet viewing. Naked eye, high quality binoculars, or a nice telescope will all be usable tools in your viewing.

How about photographing them? That could be a lot easier than it might appear at first. 

First thing to realize about planetary astro-photography is that these objects are really moving. So, ultra long exposure time are both unnecessary and even unneeded.  A good starting point for exposures is to meter the sky near your object. Then, the object itself is very brightly lit by the Sun. A half second to a few seconds may be all the shutter speed you need. Bracket! If you are shooting anything over about 20 seconds or so, you might be seeing the planet as a blob or a streak instead of as a point. 

Second, what aperture? The object is obviously at infinity for our lenses (we are probably not using  Cal-Tech grade optics). Thus, we simply want our lens's best performing f/stop. For most DSLR lenses, that will be about 2 steps down from wide open. Wide open will include too much lens issues (chromatic aberrations, flare, softness,  etc...), stopping down too far introduces other optical issues from the diaphragm.

Third, what lens? Believe it not, an ultra telephoto is not needed. You may want include some foreground objects, or maybe a cloud bank. In that case, a wide angle to short telephoto will be very useful. Your kit lens is actually a very good choice. Of course, you can always shoot through your telescope, too, with the right adapter.

Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Moon. 250mm lens on a full frame camera. Look at that high ISO noise!

Fourth, dial down that ISO. You're not going to get much detail from these objects anyways. The primary concern is the large expanse of dark sky that will show all sorts of digital noise if the ISO setting it too high. Use your digital imaging program to clean it up if you need.

Fifth, and foremost, ENJOY your evening!