Mars: Over/under processed? Capture rubbish? Both?

[Notty]

I think I've missed the boat now with Mars, but my first attempt at a planet was last week, and my inital euphoria that I'd captured something vaguely blurry and Mars like faded when I realised I couldn't make it and less blurry!  I'm trying to learn by trial and error about wavelets etc and I've put this capture through the mill every which way I can but it comes out basically the same ie pretty rubbish; blurry and noisy so I'm wondering if it's the data that's weak or the processing or both?  I'm no expert but the seeing possibly wasn't brilliant.

Shot using a QHY5L-IIc in colour.  It's about 1600 of 8000 stacked is AS!2 drizzled 1.5, then wavelets tinkered in Registax 6.  I can extract the darker areas and the pole bits but I can't sharpen it whatsoever.  

Focussing was a bit finger in the air, I recall a very large zone of fine focus between it coming obviously in/out of focus where I couldn't really see any difference on my laptop.

I've posted the post AS! (.tif file) and my best output from Registax (the .jpg), along with my wavelet settings (I've also RGB aligned it, no idea why but I've read you all do it!).  I'd appreciate any opinions on what might improve it, as I said I've no idea what everyone else's initial post stacked first cut looks like; if everyone else starts off with something sharper and more defined then at least I know where to target my efforts i.e probably focus.  I'm also wondering if there's any kind of filter I need on top of my camera which might improve image quality?  Someone said the IR filter on the QHY isn't very good and suggested another one, but I've seen amazing captures from others with the same stock camera.  Any help appreciated as always!

Drizzle15_0-8-4-252-Part0000_e11111111_b3_ap8.tif

[bruno]

Looks a bit blurred to me, could be due to atmospheric weather

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Certainly not over processed.It is receding quite fast, so the disk is small at the moment. That makes capturing detail quite hard

[Pete Presland]

is this with your ED80?

[Notty]

Thanks guys. Pete, no I would have forgiven the ED80 for this, but it was my SW200pds

[Pete Presland]

it would have been excellent for the ED80, but it is still pretty good with your 200PDS. Mars is noticably smaller now, than when at opposition a month back. the conditions have been awfull as well, so your image is very nice in my opinion.

as for the processing i do a small amount in wave lets and then do the rest in photoshop or gimp.

[Notty]

Well that's encouraging to hear Pete, thanks for that. It was a week ago and to be fair I saw a few Martian shots which were lovely and sharp but maybe conditions played a part.

[Pete Presland]

Well that's encouraging to hear Pete, thanks for that. It was a week ago and to be fair I saw a few Martian shots which were lovely and sharp but maybe conditions played a part.

the conditions really are more important than anything else. i have been imaging Mars regularly since Febuary and have a couple of decent nights, its been mega hard to get any really good images. i have been talking to other imagers who have been taking getting on for 100GB of data in there quest to catch that moment of excellent seeing.

[Owmuchonomy]

I can't get on with wavelets at all. I go straight from AS2 to photoshop. Wavelets are far too aggressive and noisy in my humble opinion.

[tingting44]

try without drizzle, drizzle is best left to when you have got excellent data

[Pete Presland]

try without drizzle, drizzle is best left to when you have got excellent data

i personally never drizzle anything other than the odd lunar image, i have never been over impressed by it.

[catman161]

This time of year Mars is now getting harder and harder to capture and the seeing conditions have to be brilliant to make it easier to get the focus spot on. I think this is just a combo of less tha ideal seeing conditions and the time (of year) at which it was imaged. You've still done well though, caught the polar cap and surface detail and cloud detail to the left of the disc. I echo others coments about drizzle too, nly use that if your data is absolutley top quality, otherwise you just exagerate all the detaisl captured, even the bad ones

 I've had a go with your .tif file in registax and Photoshop CS2-thanks for uploading

[Notty]

This time of year Mars is now getting harder and harder to capture and the seeing conditions have to be brilliant to make it easier to get the focus spot on. I think this is just a combo of less tha ideal seeing conditions and the time (of year) at which it was imaged. You've still done well though, caught the polar cap and surface detail and cloud detail to the left of the disc. I echo others coments about drizzle too, nly use that if your data is absolutley top quality, otherwise you just exagerate all the detaisl captured, even the bad ones

I've had a go with your .tif file in registax and Photoshop CS2-thanks for uploading

Drizzle15_0-8-4-252-Part0000_e11111111_b3_ap8 photoshop2.png

Wow that is a great GREAT improvement! Thanks for doing that (didn't occur to me I needed to rotate it, so lost was I in the detail. I'm glad at least my kit seems to be doing what it's designed to do, but I don't suppose you'd let me know what you did in RS and PS to get it like that would you? I would be very grateful! I don't have PS just paint+ but there must be equivalent tools there to whatever you did... having a bash myself at getting it looking like that, even under instruction would give me a lot of confidence.

[catman161]

So in registax I actually only used the top 3 sliders and slid them all to 70. Then I clicked do all and saved as PNG file. Then opened that in PS and used the following adjustment layers:

-Levels
-Curves
-Brightness/contrast
-Hue/saturation

With the adjustment layers it is very personal as to how much you do. They are all slider based so I just slid the slider on each adjustment layer until I thought it looked good and managed to eek a little cloud detail out without losing the edge sharpness too much.

After I had finished with the adjustment layers. I used unsharp mask to make it a little sharper but this did make it look quite noisy so I again went into the filters menu (where unsharp mask can be found) and clicked "blur" then "Gaussian Blur" and applied it. This made it look a little too out of focus so I clicked Edit and "fade Gaussian blur" and slid the slider down to 85% and that's it done.

Sorry I can't be more specific with the values in the adjustment layers. As I say it's quite a personal preference thing and you learn how you like the end result to look by messing about with it. The one thing I did do was clip the background with the levels adjustment layer. To do this (in the adjustment layer) slider you will see 3 small triangles along the line from left to right Black-White-Grey. I moved the white triangle all the way to the left until it was just next to the black one and then moved the black triangle (which simultaneously moves the white one) until the artefact (random white dots, colour bleed etc) that moving the white triangle to the left caused, disappear. That makes the background darker and increases the edge contrast of the disc of the planet. It sounds really complicated when written down but it's really not!

Hope this has helped rather than confused!


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[catman161]

Ooh forgot to say I also cropped the image-hence why the planet appears larger.

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[Notty]

Hey thanks so much for that info catman, I'm going to have a play now that was really helpful.

[Notty]

Well I've had a play, and I think I've managed to find Paint+ equivalents for the controls you used catman (even if I don't have a scooby what they do, and wow you don't need to move those RGB curves much to have a massive effect do you? ) and here's my final redux - and thank you all for your input it has been a great help.  I'll be ready for my next crack at it in 2 years(?) time.