AbsolutelyN

Superb Craig, that's excellent. Fingers crossed for a bit of decent weather soon. 

Well done, looks great. Love the little animation. 

No luck with Mars last night due to never ending clouds but managed this quick snap of the moon during a brief break in clouds.  

I doubled up my televue 3x with a cheap 20 year old unbranded 2x barlow and it still gave excellent results.  Saying that I'm sure there are some bad ones. I would have thought any mid range ones from FLO or similar these days will be good. 

I suspect with my image it's possibly over sharpening artefact. Still figuring out how best to process so experimenting lots.  

Just created a new animation from all the data.

https://www.astrobin.com/b5yw5m/

1 hour ago, alex_stars said:

Hi again @AbsolutelyN,

I just realized that you have the new ASI 462 MC and used to have the 224MC (same as I use). And I am contemplating about an "upgrade" to the 462MC. Looking forward to read more from you about how you like the 462MC in comparison to the 224MC.

One thing that came to my mind when I read your colour fringing comment: This might be trivial but did you use an IR blocking filter when shooting in colour? I know the 462 has a strong response in IR which might leak over to RGB and ruin your images when you do not use a IR blocking filter. Don't know how strong the effect is but I thought I ask about the blocking filter.

Clear Skies,

Alex

 

Hi Alex. I use a filter wheel so yes it had a zwo L filter for RGB which I think acts as a IR cut. That worked fine with the 224. Not sure what the issue was yet. I know before I started I was going to star collimate but seeing wasn't good enough so could  be collimation, seeing or as mentioned above perhaps oversampling. Weather is not co-operating here in UK so may be a while before have chance to try again. In terms of framerate it seemed faster - I was managing 190 frames per second at 350x350 pixels with 20 meter USB 3 cable. 

1 hour ago, Freddie said:

The pixels on your new cam are smaller than the 224 so the 5x Barlow may be a little too much for the new cam.

That past my mind. Will have to try it with the 3x to see if its does any better.

I received a ZWO 462MC earlier in the week and Thursday nights clear sky was a chance to give it see how it performs. It certainly managed a faster frame rate than the 224MC but I was unable to get focus in colour. IR was just fine for focus. I'm not sure if this was due to seeing or what but the colour images looked to have a lot of colour fringing presumably from the atmosphere. I was also using a new 5x barlow but that did great with the 224mc earlier in the week. 

The animation is approx 4 hours in IR. Stills about 30 mins derotated. All with 250PDS, 5x barlow and 462MC

IR-RGB

IR:

You don't need to use IR cut together with R, G, B filters as each of those cuts the IR as they only let through specific wavelengths. 

Thanks for the comments. Just had another go at processing and possibly extracted a tiny bit more detail. Hope we get some clear nights with good seeing over next week or two.

Another quick attempt at Mars from early this morning. 250PDS with a 5x barlow and ZWO 224MC

Second attempt with derotation:


Stack from a 3 min capture:

Quick animation.

Love the animation with such a huge amount of detail!

The 174 has quite big pixels 5.86 vs much smaller 2.9 for the 290. Smaller pixels seem better for planets. Bigger pixels generally better for deep sky - 174 has slightly bigger pixels than a full frame canon 6d. 

Superb, love it!

There have been some amazing photos of mars posted and i’ve Been noticing the mono camera seem to capture better blues. I did a google on mono vs osc and found this:

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/729197-difference-between-osc-and-monofilters-for-mars/

I just wondered if people experienced with mono and osc had an opinion on which will produce best results. I’ve been veering to osc as here in uk good seeing for planets seems/feels rather  fleeting and you may for example get a good red but bad green + blue. Any thoughts appreciated. 

Outstanding. Love the blues. I can't seem to pick them up with my colour camera. 

Superb, incredible amount of detail! 

You've got loads of detail here. Perhaps try a little less sharpening and saturation. On sharpening I try to use the pole as a guide - if that's clipping pure white then ease off a bit. 

6 hours ago, CraigT82 said:

Thats a great image, really nicely done! Maybe you should ask for a 5x barlow for Christmas?!  I think the light patch at left is cloud/mists, you will probably find they are very evident in the blue channel ( if you split the colour image) and thats a dead giveaway for cloud features.

We are looking through a lot of Martian atmosphere at the limb so only takes a little misty/hazyness there to show up strongly in the image.

Thanks, I think this is my best effort so far. I star collimated the scope before starting with a 3x barlow so wondering if that helped - though it could just have been the seeing. I can't find a good 5x barlow in stock anywhere otherwise I'd have got one. To be honest I'm surprised doubling the barlows works so well, especially given the 2x is a £20 one and 20 years old and covered in scratches. Just found  a 5x barlow at last!

Lovely clear night last night here in North Yorkshire, a bit windy at first but settled. Wish I could have continued past 2am but Mars vanishes behind trees. Not certain what the pale area on the left of the planet is. Not sure if it's real or not but certain I could see it on screen at capture so don't think it's a processing artefact. 

250PDS with ZWO 224MC with 3x + 2x barlows

Excellent image, loads of detail here

I'm thinking of putting my 250PDS to use as a second scope but currently only have a Canon 6d camera spare to use with it. Having searched the web I can't find any info on what sensor size the scope will cover with the coma corrector. I suspect it will only cover APSC at best but wondered if anyone can confirm? I'm not expecting it to cover full frame, more wondering how much I'd need to crop to know if its worthwhile. Any info much appreciated.  

The amount of detail is amazing, superb!

Fantastic image Geof!