Mars mono, C8i, PGR Flea 3

[Aussie Dave]

Mars with the Celestron 8i SCT, 2" Bintel 2x Barlow and the PGR Flea 3 monochrome CMOS camera.

Conditions seemed strange. On live view Mars was a jittery mess but conditions did improve slightly over the hour, overall conditions were average. Strange as it was I must of captured some good frames.

5000 frames stacked with AS!2, wavelets in RS6, finished off in PDN, then added some coloured filters to the final mono image from Pixlr-o-matic for effect.

 

[Grotemobile]

Very good. Got some good detail there . Bit dire in the UK, for seeing at the moment.

[Aussie Dave]

Thanks Steve. It's my second imaging session on Mars, the first with the Flea 3. I'm quite pleased with it but I don't think the Barlow is helping for any extra detail. I'm also not sure what resolution I should be capturing at.

We've just come out of a 2 week cloudy, wet and windy spell here and it's not even Winter yet. It's good to get back out there. Hope it clears up soon your end for a while. We all deserve some clear skies.

[laudropb]

Nice detail captured.

[Grotemobile]

Hi Dave. We are just coming into summer over here. Temp over here is , 12deg . A week a go we were up to 25deg .

Crazy weather. U loose a lot of light input , using a Barlow. What I have been doing is using , 2- 80mm 2" extension tubes.

This give me f15 on the C8 , with no light drop. My frame rate drops right off , using a Barlow lens. 

[Aussie Dave]

Thanks Steve, I'll unscrew the Barlow lens off the tube and try that and also add another small length Barlow tube to see if it helps with detail. My images always seem to be on the soft side, like it's not in focus.

[Grotemobile]

I find that I am getting better results with my CPC 8 HD than I ever did with the C11 believe it or not. It is were I

live is the problem. I thought larger might be better. It would  be ,  if I lived in the country side. Not in a town. My

new scope needed to be coliminated , out of the box. That could be your problem. It was mine.

[Aussie Dave]

Could be collimation Steve. I did it in the warmer months, could need another now that's it colder however stars and the 3 planets looked ok in a 32mm eyepiece. Will re-check that too.

Your 8 HD optics may be better than your C11's. I too live in the burbs. I thought I'd have better results in the colder months but I failed to consider everyone using their wood burning fires  I'm not even going to bother imaging tonight as it stinks of smoke outside.

The joys of suburbia...

[Aussie Dave]

I finished processing all the videos tonight. All are much about the same from last nights session.

This is another image and I tried not to over process and edit as I noticed I was loosing some of the edge of Mars, mainly noticeable around the right hand side.