Close-up Moon Video with Vixen 1035mm Telescope and Panasonic GH2

Some videos I took of the moon with my Vixen 110L telescope and the Panasonic GH2. I used the new 1080p @ 30 FPS mode for most of the shots.

I am using my camera mounted directly to the telescope without an eye piece. That works great for the moon since it appears much larger than the planets.

However, I would like to take pictures and videos of the planets. If you have any suggestions on how to get more magnification please let me know in the comments below.

However, the really close up ones were with the 720p @ 60 FPS settings and the cameras ETC mode. The ETC mode allows the camera to do a lossless crop of the sensor and gain either a 2.6x or 3.9x advantage in video.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Moon
• close-up
• telescope
• Vixen
• 1035mm
• Panasonic
• GH2
• Mars
• Saturn
• Jupiter
• Planets
• Astronomy

[eyepatchentertainmen]

Truly incredible. The most I've done is 200mm with 720p ETC. Wonder if this lens would work with a doubler

[mpgxsvcd]

@eyepatchentertainmen We will find out soon. I just ordered three 2x barlows. I don't think I can go out to 3x though. I bought 1 high quality, 1 low quality, and another one for the eye piece. We should collaborate on a project sometime? You have a lot of great stuff.

[xupdk]

Really awesome video. How much did that lens (or what its called) cost you?

I tried this with a Canon FD 500mm Reflex lens - and the ETC on my GH2.. didnt turn out well.

And thanks for your really inspiring videos on the GH2.. Merry Christmas :)

[mpgxsvcd]

@xupdk It is actually a full fledged telescope. I sold all of my manual focus lenses in order to get the scope for my kids for Christmas. Honestly, it was more for me than the kids although my 5 year old daughter asked if she could watch the cool moon videos and the one with the plane this morning. The key to shooting space objects is focus and atmosphere. You really need quality optics to get the focus and you need to be away from civilization for the atmosphere. I will do both soon!

[AspectRatioPolice]

Hi, did you use ETC?

[mpgxsvcd]

@AspectRatioPolice The Panasonic GH2 has an Extra teleconversion feature referred to as ETC. When you turn it on the camera crops the sensor down to 1920x1080 or 1280x720 instead of the full 16 megapixels. This will give you a 2.6x or 3.9x magnification for videos. Since it is a crop of the sensor you don’t actually lose any resolution over the 1080p or 720p full size video. It does make the noise more apparent though. Works great don’t you think?

[ghough12]

that's mighty impressive video