Ags

All the C6 variants are the same except for the paint job as far as I can tell. I bought the AstroFI C6 OTA for a really good price a couple of years ago and I use it with an AZ-GTI. The weights quoted online by Celestron for the C6 make no sense at all. I've weighed my C6 and it's 3.3 kgs (tube only, no finderscope or diagonal attached).

I tried the AS!3 feature to cut three minutes sequences down to one minute for a smoother animation. 10ms frames at 100 fps.

I do, but it even if it works on floater A, it probably brings the even bigger floater B into view. Another trick I try is raising my head, and letting gravity drag the blobs away from the lens - I have suspicion that while I look down, the floaters settle like snowflakes on the back of my lens.

@VNA Great news the MD has stopped and you can still enjoy astronomy! You are right, in the great scheme of things floaters are only a little annoyance.

Well, I was just observing Mars with the ZS66 and there were a few floaters after all... Interesting idea about a bigger planet image catching more floaters - for a while I have had the opposite theory of trying ridiculously small exit pupils to make the planet image much larger than the floaters!

At the same exit pupil or at the same magnification?

I have a real problem with floaters, those blobs of jelly that float around many people's eyes, wrecking the view of planets and the Moon at small exit pupils. With SCTs and Maks I've learned to stay at exit pupils of 1 mm or preferrably more. But with my ZS66 refractor, I can routinely use exit pupils of 0.5 mm without noticing any floaters! My eyes still have the same jelly blobs surely? I have a theory that it is related to the blobs refocusing the central obstruction of the SCTs and Maks I've been using - in these scopes, the floaters appears as worms of bright and dark segments, while in the refractors the floaters are very subtle and hard to spot. In photography there is the term 'bokeh' describing the noisyness of the out of focus areas and camera mirror lenses are known for poor bokeh - so perhaps I am not bothered by floaters as much as by the poor bokeh of catadiatropcs?

I like that Mars! Quick questions for the Mars gurus: what's the whitish stuff in the north (icy haze?) and the bright yellow swirl in the south (dust storm?)?

Last night I set aside my camera, and ventured forth with my ZS66 fitted with a 4.9mm eyepiece. Despite the small aperture and limited magnification (80x) the GRS was easy to spot and very strongly colored. Later in the evening the ZS66 took in Mars with a 3.1mm eyepiece (130x) and the phase was visible, along with some brightness on the southern edge and darkening just north of that - about what I am getting photographically with my C6 - although I'm not sure if that is a testament to the optical excellence of the ZS66, or due to my limitations as a photographer!

That's what I am doing. It seems RS6 processes large images in tiles, and is leaving gaps between the tiles.

I am struggling with Moon and the ASI485MC... just can't get a sharp stack somehow. In addition RS6 puts stitch lines in the final image (it's not a mosaic)??? Still I like the rays and the visible terrain relief on the limb.

I am pleased with this Jupiter - 3 minutes of 10ms frames (ASI485MC, 2x cheapie barlow). Processed in AS3, RS6 and Gimp. The seeing was very stable for Jupiter. This is my first go at Mars this season - really bad seeing coming off the roofs of my neighbors' houses unfortunately. I kept getting a thick rind on the edge of Mars in RS6. I figured it was possibly related to the small pixel size of the planet, so I restacked in AS3 with 1.5 drizzle and that seemed to clean up the rind problem.

Not sure what Bortle's got to do with it... My skies are a "9" and Mars is superbly red... Less red in a telescope, but the color is vivid naked-eye.

That's high praise - I know how good the SLVs are and how much you like them! I remember my Nirvana 16 was phenomenal on the moon.

I was out shooting sequences of Jupiter tonight, but there were a few naked-eye visual treats. Jupiter and the Moon were very close together in the sky, and I saw Mars for the first time this year, much to my surprise. Instantly recognizable and very red - but it was twinkling so I knew seeing in that direction was quite bad. I couldn't resist a couple of quick processes of the data to see if all was ok before going to bed... I need Mars higher and closer for my C6, but happy to capture a bit of detail already despite the liquid seeing.

Now, that just doesn't sound right, are you sure?

I know - my 6.3 reducer does improve the image quality in my C6. But the OP did question the quality of their 6.3 reducer...

I am honestly surprised by this. I suspect the edge issues you see in the ES68 24mm with the C6 must be from the scope/reducer combination?

It's worth noting that a myth was picked that matched the observations. While Deimos and Phobos are regarded as attendants or aspects of the deity, they are also only two of the six or so sons of Ares. If Mars had six moons, obviously the names of the sons would have been employed... if there was only one moon a singular association would have been picked, perhaps Ares' lover Aphrodite. Also we have to think how very small Mars is. It would only look as big as our Moon if was insanely close - less than 2 moon orbits from us. Also, unlike the Moon it is a difficult low-contrast target and I doubt even under those circumstances would Valles Marineris have been discovered by a naked eye ancient observer - we only discovered it with a space probe after all. On the Moon high contrast features like the seas were only named in the telescope age. Also, I don't think there is any classical reference to Ares/Mars being scarred. I think he was a rather handsome young man in all the stories, which is how he won the heart of shallow Aphrodite. Here is a typical Roman copy of a Greek statue of Ares:

Jupiter 2022-10-02 - Io transit - 18 x 180-second sequences (4ms @ 120fps) - C6 - ASI485MC - Amsterdam, The Netherlands

That doesn't take account of the the reduced light path due to the prism. I'd need to measure how much it shifts the focal point of an optic versus a diagonal with known optical path.

How would I measure the light path?

Here is the opening frame:

It was a night with great transparency, steady seeing and Jupiter high in the sky finally. Io was just coming in for a transit when I started imaging, and the race began between imaging the transit and Jupiter sliding behind the monstrous tower block looming over the south of my garden. I lost. Also, I followed a Registax tutorial before processing this one! C6 - ASI485MC - AZ-GTi - 18 x 180sec sequences (4ms, 120fps) - AS!3, Registax 6, Gimp

The most dramatic views I have ever had of the sky have been naked eye views. The planets are remarkable because they both move and are brighter than any star. I don't think there is any mystery as to why the ancients noticed the planets and thought they were important.