Help with Mars processing - is this real detail?

[billhinge]

Hi

I'm new to imaging and I took my first mars video a couple of weeks back and just processed it today using registax and PI

(I normally use PI on a mac but processed the video on windows today, first time with registax and AS!2. I prefer the windows stacking tools over the mac tools I used previously, i.e. lynkeos which I seem to have to pick my best frames by hand, my best 2 efforts below in which I manually selected first decent 90 frames to stack out of several thousand)

These were stacks from approx 4 mins of video taken through not very good seeing using a C11 and dslr video @ 24fps. Not sure my focus was spot on as it was by hand

Do you think I may have invented some of these features as the contrast looks a bit low compared to many of the posted images, I used mainly wavelet processing. I assume at least the white blob is the north polar cap.

I assume the rind effect on the left hand side on the larger image should be on the right? - I was using a SCT

In order to get more detail would I need to use a larger f ratio and do you need filters to get better contrast? When I looked visually all I could see was a very bright disk with some dark areas

[Atlas]

Processing is a little overheated, but you have a great focus, looks like just poor seeing conditions and a bit of overexposure.

[billhinge]

Thanks Atlas

Cool, that gives me confidence to persevere, I made a couple of mistakes that I can correct next time

Steve