geoflewis

This is excellent Neil, the detail is really starting to come through. What time were you out, as I was totally clouded out here until well after midnight, when I gave looking and went to bed?

Really nice Mars Ella, with Sinus Sabaeus and Sinus Meridiani up front and central.

Excellent views of Mars

A very nice Jupiter Ella and it's always a buz to see albedo markings on Jupiter's moons. I agree with Neil about the overly red appearance, but he's already fixed that for you 😀

It's been a real struggle recently, with the weather refusing to cooperate. I've tried to grab an image several nights recently, but no sooner do I get Mars on the camera sensor than clouds shut me down. The forcast for the last 2 nights was for clear skies, but that didn't materialise. The forecast for tonight is clear, but the Jetstream is sat over the southern half of the uk, so seeing will probably be poor. I'm just keeping everything crossed for some decent opportunities over the coming few weeks.

Nice capture Reggie

You're not imagining it. As @SmokeyJoe commented above, the weather here in Norfolk has been dreadful for the past few months. With Jupiter & Mars both coming to opposition this autumn I have been completely dedicated to planetary imaging, which in theory only requires a few minutes to grab enough data for an reasonable image. Even that has proved impossible most nights and on the nights that it's been clear, there has been so much atmospheric turbulance that the seeing has been rubbish for planetary. I've had a couple of nights of ok seeing, but no excellent, or even very good sessions. Mars opposition is 8 Dec 2022, so I have everything crossed that the weather gods will give me some opportunities over the next month, while Mars is at it's closest to Earth for the next 2 years...🤞🤞

That's excellent Chris. I did get out last night, but in the 20 mins it took me to open up and point the scope at Mars, it clouded over again.....😖

Thanks Neil, your observation is very much in line with the feedback that I received from Richard McKim, who on a similar comparison prefers the original processing as having greater scientific merit. FWIW I have continued to refine the final processing and following feedback from Niall MacNeil in Australia about the 'milky' appearance of the image, I have further adjusted the black and white points in Affinity Photo to get this..... BTW I saw a clear sky last night here at 11:30pm, so ventured out, but as I was focussing on Mars the screen went dark and looking up the sky was 75% cloud, which by the time I shut everything down was more like 95% cloud, so not a single capture..... Maybe tonight.....🤞

Thanks, so by 'the first' do you mean my original image, or the one on the left of the three being compared, i.e. the latest version, which BTW I've already updated after discussing with @Kon

Thanks Kostas, yes, I think that's what it is, but not completely sure. I have these settings now. I was using Blend RAW for 30%, thinking that meant 30% sharpening, but as I experimented I discovered that the higher the blend RAW % was, the less the image was sharpened. I used to never sharpen in AS3! until someone (can't remember who) suggested trying it. It's all trial and error - I'm really good at the error part....

Thanks Kostas, there are 3 main changes, one in AS3! and two in Registax: I reduced the sharpening in AS3! from adding back 30% original to adding back 90% original. I tried just about every comination from no sharpening in AS3! to a lot in 10% steps. I found a little sharpening helps with the wavelets, but not too much. Two things in Registax: I experiement with several histogram settings. I've rarely bothered with the histogram tool previously, but found that by raising the black point to about 25, (NB I tried several points) seemed to help control the edge rind on Mars, and lowering the white point to around 220 (also tried a variety of points) brightened the planet and increased the red/orange colours somewhat. These settings allowing me more room to play with the wavelets in stage 2 below. I switched to using the default wavelets, instead of the Gaussian wavelets, which is what I've always used for many years. I also dropped to Step 0 from Step 1, again this allowing me more room to set the wavelet sliders with finer control. I also played around with saturation and levels settings in Affinity Photo, but I think the above 3 process changes are the main learning points for me so far. I will keep experimenting, but it's been a fun exercise and no doubt all the settings will respond differently with different data. I added a bit more saturation to V3 so similar to V2, to get V4 below. ...and before you say it, you're right, I can't stopped playing with the processing. Mainly, I didn't like the muddy brown colour I've been getting, though these redder versions are still very different to the colours that Damian Peach and Martin Lewis are posting......🤷‍♂️

Thanks John, It's a bit of a game and what happens when I don't have any new data to process......🙄. Maybe I should have kept the higher saturation of V2 for V3.....🤔

Ok @skybadger and anyone else that want's to comment, how about this version please? The original is on the right, V2 in the middle and latest on the left? A tad more sharpening and less saturation.....🤔

Nice Mars Kostas, no sign of any gaps here, just wall to wall clouds. As @neil phillips says, we a need a break in this God awful weather soon…. 🤞

Thanks, I wondered about that myself, so maybe somewhere between the two….? 🤔

Believe me Avani, I and everyone doing planetary imaging from the UK, very well understand the challenges of imaging the planets when they are at low elevations 😖. Even now Jupiter is only 35° for me and Saturn, barely above 20° elevation and doesn't get to a good altidude for another 5 or 6 years - I may be too old then. At least we have Mars above 50° this year and next year Jupiter will be similar, so the worm is definitely turning for us in the high northern hemisphere latitudes....🤞

Ok, so whilst the weather has been rubbish, I've been experimenting / teaching myself some new processing techniques. I used them for my recent 20 Nov Mars image and quite liked the result, so I've gone back and reprocessed the data from 13 Novemeber. Here are the previous and latest attempts... What do you all think? Do you like me prefer the new version, which is brighter and I think, smoother and if yes, should I go back and reprocess all this year's Mars images using the new method? TIA.

I still think it looks good Dave.

Thanks Suart. Yes F21 was indeed far too much for the conditions, not that I realised that was what I was doing......🤔🙄

As per the edit note above, much to my surprise when reviewing the capture details file from FireCapture, I discovered that I was actually operating at F21, so I did have the Baader Barlow lens in train. I now recall getting ready to do that last time out, but I lost the sky before I could capture anything, so I must have left the lens in situ without realising it. Even when I saw the larger image scale during processing I didn't cotton on to the reason why - doh..!! 🙄

Yep, absolutely rubbish seeing. This was with native scope, no barlow. I was going to try the barlow, but clouds ended the session, so I still haven't been able to try higher sampling rates on Mars this apparition. The forecast for the coming nights is rubbish, so I just have to make do with what little I can grab as and when. EDIT: As per the separate post below, this capture did include using the Baader barlow lens.

I waited and waited for the forecast clear sky sky to materialise, which it did around 11pm. However, when I opened up on got on target, Mars was a boiling mess due to adverse seeing with the jetstream moving overhead during the evening. I managed 4 runs, each with worsening seeing and the last one as clouds piled back in, so this is the best 10% from the first 6 minute run. There's not much in the way of fine detail, but large features such as Syrtis Major, Sinus Sabaeus, Sinus Meridiani and Hellas are clearly seen, with the polar hood and clouds towards the south also visible.

Very nice animation

That’s not too shabby Neil. It was clear here early, but we have family visiting, so was dinner time and then cloud piled in later….