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I have a Canon EOS 1200D (Rebel T5) and a reflector telescope, and I want to take some photos of Jupiter with them.

If I use burst mode, camera starts moving its mechanical parts: the mirror, or the shutter, or both. I don't know exactly.

This produce a lot of vibrations on the telescope, thus making motion blur.

Even if I lock the mirror up, and display image on the screen, when I press the shutter button, it stats moving some mechanical parts and producing vibrations.

How can I avoid that? Is there a way to prevent any movement of mechanical parts to take a burst?

In theory, live view mode should ensure the mirror doesn't flip, if you don't use quick mode autofocus.

In practice, though, your camera is a very cheap one, that has probably an integrated shutter/mirror motor, so I assume the mirror actuates the same time the shutter actuates. So, if you use a burst, unfortunately the mirror probably actuates between images in the burst.

Sorry I don't have a source stating the integration of shutter/mirror motor for this particular camera, but at least https://www.lmscope.com/en/Digitalkamera_Vibrationen_en.html says about cheap cameras:

Lower priced SLR cameras generally do not have separate motors that drive the mirror and the shutter. If the shutter is operated in Live View mode, the mirror flips down and then up again. All this flipping shakes the camera and thus causes (sometimes significant) vibrations that may seriously compromise the image quality. To reduce the impact of mirror slap, most models come equipped with a special function called mirror lock-up (mirror pre-release). When the mirror lock-up function is enabled, the mirror is flipped up well before the shutter opens (a time interval between 2 and 8 seconds can be selected). This short pause allows the mirror-induced mechanical vibrations to die down before exposing the film so that they do not affect the image quality.

Edit: now I found the quote: http://krebsmicro.com/Canon_EFSC/index.html

With the 450D, 500D and 1000D, the mirror drops after the exposure ends in a
non-flash situation during Live View. With the 40D, 50D, 5D Mark II and 7D, the
mirror does not drop in a non-flash Live View situation except when the user
executes Quick Mode AF. The sequencing difference is due to the fact that the
Rebel cameras use only one motor to control both mirror and shutter operation,
whereas the 40D, 50D, 5D Mark II and 7D have two motors for independent control
of these functions.

If I use burst mode, camera starts moving its mechanical parts: the mirror, or the shutter, or both. I don't know exactly.

Typically, the order of operations is: mirror flips, shutter opens. This is regardless of shooting mode. Using Live View or Mirror Lock-Up changes the rules a bit and takes the mirror flip out of the equation, but the shutter is still there.

Even if I lock the mirror up, and display image on the screen, when I press the shutter button, it stats moving some mechanical parts and producing vibrations.

This is the shutter. If you want to have the absolute minimum amount of vibration, you need to:

• Use single shot mode


• Use Mirror Lock Up


• Have a rock solid tripod


• Use a remote shutter release


• Hit the shutter release for the mirror to flip and wait a few seconds


• Release the shutter to take the shot

If this single pass of the shutter opening and closing is causing you to have camera shake, then you may want to look into a different camera, one that has an electronic shutter instead of a mechanical one.

I'm reading your question about the camera, but I'm also reading why you want this (to image Jupiter).

First, to address your direct question on vibration with the 1200D:

The 1200D lacks "mirror lock-up" mode. This is the traditional way to eliminate vibrations caused by mirror-slap. You would have to use live-view mode to eliminate mirror-slap with this camera.

Next, to address planetary imaging:

However, imaging planets is very different from imaging deep-sky objects (DSOs). DSOs (nebulae, galaxies, etc.) are normally imaged via many long-exposure images which are stacked. Planets use a form of "lucky imaging" in which you capture many frames of video, parse through to find the best frames, and then stack those.

This means that to get good results on planets, you would use video instead of single frames. Ideally this would be uncompressed video frames. The camera should preferably be capable of at least 60 frames per second. And because it's Jupiter (which rotates much faster than any other planet in the solar system) the upper-limit for capture time is about 1 minute worth of data (going beyond that will result in the stacked frames blurring from the rotation -- although there is de-rotation software as WinJupos which does a bit of magic with the images to re-map the pixels for better alignment).

The top planetary imagers are guys like Damian Peach and Christopher Go. Damian has a chapter in the book Lessons by the Masters which details the process.

Check out images at Astrobin (extremely popular website for posting astrophotography): https://www.astrobin.com/search/?q=Jupiter&d=i&t=all

Most astro-imagers post details including equipment used, software, and sometimes the processes. You'll notice that ZWO brand cameras are extremely popular for this sort of work (ZWO cameras have model numbers that begin with "ASI..." such as ASI290MC or ASI120MC-S). The least-expensive is the ASI120MC-S and it's able to capture at 60fps (higher end models are much faster). The trends in which cameras are popular changes over time (past brands have been QHY, Imaging Source, Point Grey, etc.) but you'll also notice if you browse through the best images that it's extremely hard to find anyone who uses a DSLR for this type of imaging.

Atmospheric seeing conditions will distort the image quality (picking a good night to image helps). This is where "lucky imaging" comes in. Software can help analyze the video frames and pick the best frames to stack ... rejecting the rest. AutoStakkert and Register are popular stacking programs (and free) for planetary image stacking (don't use these programs for DSOs).

You can use a DSLR for this (put the camera in video mode), but you'll find it easier to get good results with the dedicated CMOS astro-imaging cameras. (In US Dollars, an ASI120MC-S is around $150 ... which makes it a pretty affordable camera.)