How to capture planet and satellites.

[Jairo]

Saturn's satellites are much fainter than the planet. I can get Titan and Rhea visible, but the rest is usually lost.

I de-selected the planet image and sharpened and adjusted the curves of the background so I got them brighter, but I felt that was "wrong".

Do you know any procedure (smart sharpen? stacking of images with different expositions?) to get them all visible in the same image?

Thanks.

[astropaz]

The best way would be to take two different exposures, one normal so you get the detail of the planet and then the second one you over expose your settings and the planets will show up more.
Then you can remove the over exposed planet and add the regular one to the moons.

There are probably a number of ways to do it but this is the one that seems easiest to me.

[Jairo]

I'll end up doing this to show the faintest satellites. But is it possible to compose an image with a higer dynamic range, as I've seen people doing with the Orion Nebula?

[RickJ]

M42 is dealt with the same way. Two or even three exposures as its dynamic range exceeds that of any affordable CCD by quite a margin. Same with faint moons. With M42 some will carry this even further imaging the faintest parts with 30 minute narrow band exposures and the brightest with 1 minute RGB exposures. And using 10 minute LRGB for the middle range. M42 is by far the most difficult of all the M objects to image well in my opinion due to its huge dynamic range. Yet most beginners want to start there. It is FAR from a beginners object.

Rick