Uranus & its moons

My first ever photo of Uranus, captured last night (2024-01-26)

 

This was captured using my newly purchased ZWO 715MC. This camera has amazingly small pixels that allows a telescope often used for deep sky to overcome its small focal length with densely packed small 1.45 micron pixels.

 

This is a perfect match for my 8" newtonian which has a native focal length of 1000mm. Typically you'd need an SCT or a big dobsonian with a camera with larger pixels. Up until now, basically all planetary cameras have had a pixel size of 2.9 microns.

 

This photo shows 4 of Uranus' moons. They're incredibly faint even on a relatively fast aperture setup for planetary. At magnitude 15, they're as faint as many deep sky targets requiring long exposures to reveal them. Long exposures and planetary are not something you hear very often.

 

The setup:

 

- ZWO ASI 715MC

- ZWO ADC

- ZWO EAF

- Skywatcher 200P (modified)

- Skywatcher EQ6R

- SharpCap

- AutoStakkert

- Registax

- Photoshop

 

10,000 frames captured at 112FPS, Moons 5s x 20 (max gain of 600)

Done