Mars from the 16th November

[geoff_k]

Brass monkey weather overnight but thought I would have another go at the Red Planet as ice formed on the scope tube.

Mars is a very naughty planet and will NOT sit still when it is having its photo taken.

These are two efforts using my Europa 250mm F4.8, Toucam and IR filter. firstly with a 3 x Barlow, then the 4 x Imagemate. Some resizing and tinkering in Registax but not much post processing. Tried eyepiece projection to see if I could get a better image scale but no dice.

Thanks for looking.

[Roy Batty]

Hi Geoff,

What time did take these images? - I was also looking a mars last night through an icing up scope, even popped in my webcam but the image on the laptop was too blurry for me to take any images, probably due to mars being too low to the horizon at the time i was viewing (10 pm)

I'd also be interested if you have any tips for webcam settings for imaging planets?

cheers

RB

[barkis]

They are not that bad Geoff. Considering the low dec of mars, you are imaging through a lot of naughty stuff.

The conditions for imaging the planet will improve as time progresses. Keep the faith buddy.

Ron.

[geoff_k]

Thanks gents.

From what I can remember I was using the following settings with my Toucam:

5 fps

Shutter Speed 1/50 with the Gain quite low.

Saturation about 75%

About 800 frames in each instance.

I actually resized the final images in Powerpoint as I find this works better.

The images were taken (with apologies to Sir Mick Jagger) just around midnight. No brown sugar was used in the imaging process

[jb1970]

Thanks for sharing your pictures. I was out at about the same time last night (it was very cold!) , looking at Mars at various magnifications from x150 to x300. I sketched what I could see during the better moments and my sketch looks alot like your pictures (apart from not colour and not as good). When I am only catching brief glimpses I am never 100% sure how accurate my sketching is, so it's good to see an image taken at the same time to compare.

Jack

[barkis]

Thanks for sharing your pictures. I was out at about the same time last night (it was very cold!) , looking at Mars at various magnifications from x150 to x300. I sketched what I could see during the better moments and my sketch looks alot like your pictures (apart from not colour and not as good). When I am only catching brief glimpses I am never 100% sure how accurate my sketching is, so it's good to see an image taken at the same time to compare.

Jack

Sketching at the scope is an admirable thing to do Jack, the only reason I don't do it, well two reasons, one lazy, and the other rubbish at drawing. Don't be shy about putting your sketches up for us to see, we would welcome them as they are I deal portrayers of what telescopic views are really like. There are a few members who partake in this activity, and some wonderful results have been produced.

Ron.

[MartinB]

The imagemate definitely wins the day. Great images. Getting closer all the time