Mars and Saturn 23rd March

[ejwwest]

Mars last night with the DFK21AU618 and 2x barlow: 1500 shots stacked with AS2 and wavelets in Registax 6. Followed Alan's advise (many thanks) on settings from http://stargazerslounge.com/imaging-planetary/181588-mars-20-march-c9-25-a.html and colours are much better than previous attempts requiring little adjustment afterwards. I still get a "ghosting" presumably from misaligned frames being stacked.

Mars by ejwwest, on Flickr

I think I need 1 3x or 4x barlow now to see more.

Here's a very first attempt with Saturn. No barlow. It was very low so v poor seeing.

Saturn by ejwwest, on Flickr

I'll see how this improves over the next few months.

[cgarry]

I get a similar ghosting to that in your Mars image. I am not sure of the cause but it seems to happen in some seeing conditions and not in other.

Nice Saturn by the way, I would not have dreamed of imaging it with all the murk we had in Cambridge.

Cheers,

Chris

[Space Cowboy]

Have your tried using castrator before stacking in as!2? You wont get misaligned frames if the avi is cropped and centred first.

[ejwwest]

Have your tried using castrator before stacking in as!2? You wont get misaligned frames if the avi is cropped and centred first.

Thanks will try that next.

[ejwwest]

Had try with castrator. Aaprt from the fact AS2 then produced a mono image (so I need to suss out the interplay of debayering between the two) there was still a ghost image. Clearly I need to experiment further but looks like one can spend a huge amount of time processing AVIs with different software and setting compared to the time at the scope itself!

[cgarry]

I actually see this at capture time, so for me it is nothing to do with the stacking it is down to strange seeing conditions.

Cheers,

Chris

[ejwwest]

I sorted out the debayering problem between Castrator and AS2. I reduced the number of exposures to include to 1000 but still get the ghosting. Probably down to poor seeing and maybe I should try shorter exposures to resolve that.

[Space Cowboy]

Something weird going on there. Even in terrible seeing the stacked image should not have a ghost affect. Either your collimation is way out or its something else. Would be interesting to see a live video clip?

[ejwwest]

Something weird going on there. Even in terrible seeing the stacked image should not have a ghost affect. Either your collimation is way out or its something else. Would be interesting to see a live video clip?

I don't think the collimation is way off, but will try that. I shortened the exposure and that has reduced the ghosting:

Mars by ejwwest, on Flickr

I now need a higher magnification barlow. Based on what you've seen so far would you recommend I go for a 3X or a 4X? Which make (and I'm not yet in teh game for a Powermate!).

Thanks