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Stacking 3 cheap filters finally got me a clear shot of Jupiter
Ngl I've been trying to get a decent photo of Jupiter for like 6 months with my 8 inch dob. Every time I used a single color filter the image was either too blurry or washed out. Last week I stacked my red green and blue filters in front of my phone camera and it actually worked. Got a shot with 3 bands visible and two moons. It's not pro level but it's way better than anything I've done before. Has anyone else tried stacking basic filters instead of buying one expensive one?
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elizabethwhite21d ago
Hang on, have you looked at the field of view through three stacked filters? I tried that once with my 8 inch dob and the image was so dark I could barely make out the planet, let alone bands. Your mileage may vary of course, but in my experience stacking filters cuts out so much light that you lose detail on anything smaller than the moon. I'd be curious what the exposure settings were on your phone, because even with my old DSLR I had to bump up the ISO way high and it got all grainy. Not trying to knock your result, just saying most folks I've talked to find a single decent filter and maybe a cheap barlow gets cleaner results with less hassle.
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benflores21d ago
Stacking filters like that is actually the worst way to go for planetary imaging. You're cutting out so much light that even with a bright target like Jupiter you're basically throwing away signal. Those three bands you see are probably just artifacts from the filter stack itself, not real detail. A single luminance filter or even no filter at all with the right camera settings will give you way more data to work with in stacking software. The fact that you got three bands visible doesn't prove the method works, it just means your phone's auto exposure compensated badly. Most folks who've tried this end up with a dark, muddy image that falls apart when you zoom in. You'd be better off spending that money on one decent IR cut filter and learning to adjust your phone's camera settings manually.
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