Better Mars from larger stack

[JCdeBoer]

Hey all,

About a month ago I posted an image I took of Mars with poor seeing. Some of you suggested that I should take way more images for stacking so I did.

The evening of the 18th seeing wasn't bad, although I could see the planets become wobblier whenever the wind blew for a couple of seconds. My mount isn't as sturdy as it used to be... Got a spare one which I probably should get unboxed. Anyway, I took about 10 videos of ~250 frames each and stacked the best 30% in AutoStakkert!2. After using some wavelets (which I indeed could push a little further with this larger stack) and some afterprocessing in photoshop this is what I got:

I noticed that the red image required some photoshop adjustment before I could use wavelets. I did remove the IR filter from my xbox camera to make it more sensitive but I haven't got a dedicated IR filter yet so I used my light pollution filter. This makes the red image blurry and heavier influenced by achromatic distortion from my refractor. I think about getting another xbox webcam to get the default ir filter back in.

Thanks to the ones who adviced me to take more images and please let me know if you have some further advice regarding imaging or processing

[Pete Presland]

nicely done, Mars going to more and more dificult as the weeks go by, shrinking in size pretty quickly.

[JCdeBoer]

Thanks! And yep I noticed. Jupiter is also getting more and more difficult as it is getting at very low angles before the sky is even slightly dark.

Saturn doesn't seem to get at any reasonable angle either. Nevertheless I like trying to get it as good as possible. From the same night as the Mars image I also got my best Saturn so far:

Worked on it quite a bit, but you can still see that the red image was distorted by IR. Any suggestions for a cheap (it is still a dirt cheap xbox webcam) 1.25" IR cut filter?