Two giant sunspot groups, active regions 10488 and 10486, were shot with a 5-inch f/8 refractor working at approximately 4,550 mm of focal length at f/35 with eyepiece projection with a 20 mm orthoscopic eyepiece and a white-light solar filter. A single 1/640th second exposure at ISO 500 was made with a Nikon D1H DSLR camera. False color was added in Photoshop. A series of 300 single-frame images were made, and then each was examined visually for sharpness. This was the sharpest frame overall. This is a manual implementation of lucky imaging, but without multi-point alignment and stacking.

High-magnification planetary imaging can be done with a DSLR shooting single frames, as the images in this section show.

However, much better results can be obtained by using lucky imaging and video, as we will see in the next section.

The image of the sunspot groups at the top of this page was made as a single frame under good seeing conditions, but 300 frames had to be shot and painstakingly examined to find one really good one.

The Lunar "X" was shot with a 5-inch f/8 refractor working at approximately 4,550 mm of focal length at f/35 with eyepiece projection with a 20 mm orthoscopic eyepiece. A single 1/30th of a second exposure at ISO 1600 was made with a Canon Digital Rebel XS (1000D) DSLR camera.

The Lunar X, seen immediately above, is an interesting lighting effect that only occurs around first quarter Moon. It was made in average seeing conditions.

Even though these images were magnified when they were shot, they were cropped to show more detail here.

All three images were shot with the telescope on a tracking mount.

Crescent Venus near inferior conjunction was shot with a 5-inch f/8 refractor working at approximately 4,550 mm of focal length at f/35 with eyepiece projection with a 20 mm orthoscopic eyepiece. A single 1/500th of a second exposure at ISO 400 was made with a Canon Digital Rebel XS (1000D) DSLR camera.

The image of Venus as a very thin crescent near inferior conjunction was made in mediocre seeing conditions.

These images are representative of what could be accomplished with a single frame in the days before video was used for high-magnification, high-resolution imaging. They are not that bad. The sunspot image in particular is actually quite good for being a single image.

Single Frame Lucky Imaging

Lucky imaging normally uses hundreds or thousands of frames shot in a video. But can you use the same concept for a series of single frames?

Yes you can.

The results may not be as good because you won't have as many frames with the chance to catch some moments of good seeing, but you can certainly give it a try if you have multiple single frames.

The main consideration here would be how many frames you can expose before planetary rotation smears fine details, as we discussed in Chapter 1 Section 8.

For subjects like Saturn, if you are not trying to capture any fine details in the rings or on the planet, you can shoot for quite a while.

If you try this, use mirror lock-up, and a remote release so you don't have to touch the scope to open the shutter which could introduce blurring in the image.

Even if you only have a handful of images, with multi-point alignment and stacking, you may get better results than from just a single frame.

Generally, if you have a DSLR camera made since 2007, it will have Live View and you will get better results if you record Live View for lucky imaging than trying to shoot single frames, but, as this section illustrates, you can get good images with just a single frame.

Shooting Techniques

High magnification can be achieved at prime focus of a telescope with a reasonably long focal length of about 1,000 mm. Even more magnification can be obtained by using a Barlow lens or eyepiece projection.

As with prime focus single images, all of the shooting techniques and camera settings that we used for wide-angle scenic shots apply to high-magnification single frame images also.

Focus is now fairly easy because we are at long focal lengths at high magnification and magnified Live View works very well. For bright objects like the Sun, Moon and planets, exposures usually aren't that long, but because of the magnification involved, the object will move out of the field of view very quickly on a fixed tripod. A tracking mount is recommended for high-magnification work.