geoflewis

Lovely images Neil. I’m curious when you say the 462MC sensor has colour bleed. What does that mean and how do you recognise it, as I got that camera in part to try some colour lunar images?

Maybe it's all the glass being pointed at it from Earth right now......🤔

Thanks Stuart, that's very kind of you; now that I've picked myself off the floor....!! I guess it was that polished DP look that I was after, but I couldn't convince myself about it, they just seemed too smooth, so maybe something between is what I should try for. I asked Richard McKim, BAA Mars Section Director which he prefered and he said that he thought the sharper version had more merit from a scientific content standpoint, so I've gone with that. I will keep experimenting. Cheers.

No worries and thanks for the feedback on the later versions.

Thanks Neil, I just wish the weather would cooperate. I've just looked outside and it's already foggy, with no stars or planets, to be seen....

I put up 2 versions. The fisrt ones I went for a very smooth look, even with the detail still there, but then reworked them my usual method, which is a btter sharper and leves a more textured look. Will be interested to hear what you think.

That's big step up in quality. The colours are pretty much spot on and lots of details coming through. It is a tad noisy, so maybe capture an stack more frames, or hold back on the sharpening a bit. Don't forget to have a try at Mars at it's very bright, at a high elevation and only a couple of weeks shy of its opposition, after which it will be receeding againuntil it comes around again in a couple years.

That looks great Dave. I've said it many times before, because it's true; it's one of my favourite visual targets, especialy in my 22x85 binoculars and that's just about what i see with them.

Hi Kostas, I'm actually shooting 6 min SERs, did I say something else by mistake somewhere? I've also reprocessed the data, going back to how I've previously done it with a little sharpening included during AS3! stacking before Registax. I was trying for a smoother look hence tried something different, but I think the images came out too smooth and not revealing the detail that was there. Here they are again... There's a more pronounced edge rind, but otherwise I think I prefer these versions. As always I am very interested in what others think.

Thanks Andy, I'm always hoping 😉🤞

Thanks Kostas, yes, the detail was good on screen early on when I was capturing the IR, but I noticed that the seeing already started to fall away in the 2nd IR run. I was intending to capture 3 x IR then 3 x RGB without the barlow, then rinse and repeat with the barlow included. However, things got progressively worse through the first set of RGB and by the time I'd added in the barlow lens and refocussed for the 2nd set it was getting really bad. I pressed on for a bit, then waited to see if it would clear, but it was no good. My observatory was full of fog with everything soaking wet dew, by the time I gave up.

Excellent image Neil. The seeing deteriorated here and I got fogged in as Mars gained altitude, but had a few reasonable runs early on.

Here's a look at Mars in IR and RGB from last night. The images are with the scope at it's native F11 with the ADC in train, so actually coser to F13 (FL = 4700mm). I've resized both images from 96dpi to 192dpi (so x2). The IR is a the best 10% from 2x6 min SERs, then de-rotated in WinJupos. The RGB is the best 10% of 3x6 min SERs, also de-rotated. I had hoped to conduct some more experiments at higher amplification, which came out at F20 (FL-7400mm), so I possibly got the barlow lens slightly further away from the sensor than previous nights which reported F11 and F18 respectively, but unfortunately the seeing deteriorated and fog piled in. Nevertheless, here is a single IR that I did get, also the best 10% and resized as best I could to the other 2 images. The rotation angle is as captured with the north polar cap around 11 o'clock position, wheras WinJupos corrected the earlier images to display north up. It's also slightly more sharpened, hence the darker dark regions, so it's difficult to draw any conclusions. However, on my working screen, there is finer detail all over and especially in the brighter areas of the globe in the lower sampled (F13) image. Hopefully one of these nights I'll be able to get a long enough run to perform some more meaningful comparisons, including in RGB.

Nice capture Kostas

The downside of the huge file sizes and processing overhead is something that's putting me off the higher sampling rate, perhaps other than in excellent seeing, if we ever get that...🙄

Thanks @vlaiv, that actually made more sense to me than I expected when I first saw the post.....🤯

Hi Lee, I have say, this is another area where theory and reality do not align. I've had a few discussions with Anthony Wesley (Bird) and Niall MacNeil, both imaging from Australia and they do not capture at anything like those high rates. Both have done a lot of their own analysis and Niall suggests that optimum is 13ms / 76fps (hence why I used that) and Bird even slower at 65 fps. Here's is what Bird wrote about it in a discussion with Niall, which he shared with me, so I hope it's ok for me to repeat here. The high quality of their images speak for themselves. Take a look at what Niall is posting on AstroBin.....https://www.astrobin.com/users/macnenia/ I was going to pick out some examples, but there are so many that you can take your pick....

I decided to process the earlier 3x6 min RGBs captured at F18, then de-rotate and stack the 3 images. NB I did not de-rotate the individual SERs, so some loss of fidelity will have occured due to rotation over each 6 min period.

Nice capture

Nice set of images

Nice image Kostas, I’d say that’s a bit more than ‘some detail trying to come through’, there’s lots on show here.

Thanks Stuart

Lovely images and excellent animation.

Nice capture Lee, definitely worth putting up, even if a tad late

Nice capture Peter