Kon

Thanks Angie. It was my first occultation to image/"observe from the laptop screen". The others were missed due to the wonderful British weather. I am glad you managed a session for the second part with your binos.

Thanks Nik. I agree awful seeing and cold! I took a few shots with my DSLR early on which i need to go through as well. Looking forward to your pics if you decide to post them. By the way, the exposure I used was based on the moon so your calculation was spot on yesterday, thanks!

Well this morning's event does not need introduction. Somehow seeing was not good with Mars and Moon both boiling despite the lack of jetstream. I wonder if the cold spell was the culprit. By the end of the session my Dob was covered in thin ice. My best pictures came without the powermate. The first three images are before Mars disappeared behind the moon and the last one is after it emerged back out at 6am (this was with the 2.5x TV powermate); at that point clouds were rolling in and I was lucky to capture it but my focusing suffered. 8" Dob, manual, asi462mc, with or without 2.5x TV powermate.

That looks very nice. I was surprised how bad the seeing was last night considering no direct jetstream over us.

Excellent image Geof. Very nice detials. It seems the north polar cap is keep shrinking.

Thanks, it makes sense.

Thanks Nik. Sounds that it may work. Where did you get these interesting information?

I am in two minds here. Likewise, I go for the DSLR but I quite fancy a more close up . As it is opposition tomorrow night, my plan is to test my planetary camera on the moon to not be over exposed and then capture a few frames of Mars and see if I can get something decent under the same settings. I agree that I will be limited on the frames I can stack, thus being in two minds 😬. At least the weather is looking good.

I think this topic might be relevant to others so it might be a better place than the usual advise section. It is a one off event for a while so i want to get it right, if I can. With the Moon occultation of Mars, what is the best way to capture it at high resolution next to the limp of the moon? Using any camera will probably overexpose the moon. Do you record a movie of the event and set gain to Mars and then shoot the moon at less gain to make a composite, I don't like doing that, or do you get the gain relative to the moon and brighten up Mars later postprocessing? Or do you use the planetary camera to take stills and stack them? Or am I thinking it completely wrong? I assume with the 8" Dob, I am probably better off without the barlow? Thanks for any help, Kostas

Stunning as always! Very smooth, it's like flying by.

Thanks Joe. You are very kind. After the opposition I plan to have a sort break from planet imaging as I want to go back to observing some of the winter nebulas.

I am really sorry to hear.It sounds awful but I hope the symptoms get better. I hope you manage a quick session this week but like you said it's looking pretty cold. I wish you all a speedy recovery!

Well done on the first images. Promising start. Once you get your filter the colour balance should get better.

Thanks Geof. As I said, we are blessed having several imagers here including yourself giving advise out. I quite like the workflow that Stuart gave me. I like experimenting with all the software but as I am finding out, if the data is crap, you get crap back 🤣. Let's see how the weather holds for this Thursday. I hope you escaped the virus.

Thanks Neil. Stuart really helped with getting me to get a feeling of what's a more natural looking Mars and still maintain the details, the same way you helped me with Jupiter. It's great having you guys around who are willing to help.

Thanks. Much happier with these images

Thanks. Still learning as I go along. I am looking forward to your captures with the new planetary camera.

Thanks. Yes much much happier with the new image. Let's see if the promised clear sky on opposition holds.

I have learned a lot and really appreciate the time you took with me. Thursday night is looking good for the opposition, let's see what we can get.

Thanks. Yes getting a feeling for the more natural look is taking a bit of time. I think we are always drawn to 'sharper' images even if the data do not really support them. Yes top slider to 15 in 'Preview'.

Thanks Harvey. I feel with the new 'softer' processing the larger image looks as good as the original scaled one.

Being clouded out for the past few days, I reworked my Mars from the 30 November capture. The workflow is almost exclusively in image analyzer. Thanks to Stuart, @Space Cowboy, for taking the time to help me on the new workflow and feedback behind the scenes 😉. This is just a single capture rather than the winjupos stack of 6 movies; it seems that any sharpening that I was using in AS!3 was really enhancing the edge rind; this has no sharpening apart from 15% wavelets in registax. I like the natural look of it compared to what I previously posted (looking back at the original post, it looks quite posterised/artificial). Happy for further criticism as always. First is original capture size and second 150% resized.

That looks miles better than what I got. Unfortunately, I realised that I deleted the folder as I was making space on my hd for the latest capture. Still very interested what you did with it. If you have the time and energy to let me know the steps in a message that will be fantastic!

Very nice report Joe. Good you are enjoying the Australian summer nights. We have been blessed with constant clouds in UK

Some nice details. I can see Olympus Mons at 2oclock. You may want to play with the colour balance saturation a bit so it's a bit more vibrant.