Recent Mars and Saturn

[astroman001]

Lovely spell of weather here in the UK. We had two nights of reasonable seeing on 17th and 18th July.  Here is a Mars from 18th and Saturn from 17th July. Taken with the ASI224MC colour cam plus a luminance image using an IR filter on the colour cam. I separated the colour into RGB, then combined with the IR to give LRGB. There is probably a simpler way, but it seems to work.

Peter

[triton1]

Wow nice one amazing to see so much detail on Mars and can't knock Saturn either well done.

[StargeezerTim]

Saturn is fabulous!

[neil phillips]

Nice one Peter pulling out great detail this low

[laudropb]

Very nice images showing lovely detail.

[jimbo747]

Surfing random posts... That Mars image is superb! I've had my eye on the 224mc, that's just made my mind up.

[CraigT82]

On 23 July 2016 at 17:30, astroman001 said:

Lovely spell of weather here in the UK. We had two nights of reasonable seeing on 17th and 18th July.  Here is a Mars from 18th and Saturn from 17th July. Taken with the ASI224MC colour cam plus a luminance image using an IR filter on the colour cam. I separated the colour into RGB, then combined with the IR to give LRGB. There is probably a simpler way, but it seems to work.

Peter

Lovely images! I'm curious to learn how you seperated into RGB, did you shoot through filters with the colour cam or is it something in the processing? 

[broadway1]

Great images, Peter.

[Stub Mandrel]

Lovely images.

[astroman001]

In answer to Craig, I used Maxim DL to split the colour image into it's separate RGB channels, then combined them with IR to make an LRGB image. 

[CraigT82]

19 minutes ago, astroman001 said:

In answer to Craig, I used Maxim DL to split the colour image into it's separate RGB channels, then combined them with IR to make an LRGB image. 

Thanks Peter... Hmmm I'll have to check Maxim DL out!  In processing the images this way can you see a noticeable improvement in the image over the colour image as produced by the camera and normal processing?

Just to be clear, when you say you combined them with IR do you mean you combined the colour channels with an image shot through an IR Pass filter? with the IR pass image acting as the luminence channel?  Do you use the 685nm filter or the 742nm?

I'm assuming the ASI224 doesn't have an intergrated IR cut filter?  When you're imaging in colour do you need to screw on a separate IR cut filter?

Craig

[astroman001]

Hi Craig

 

Yes I think you have understood.  The main reason for doing this is to take advantage of the sharper IR image to act as the luminence and increase the level of detail seen in the image.The IR luminence channel is shot using the colour cam with an IR 742nm pass filter in front. The 224MC needs to have an IR/UV cut filter for good colour shots. It is quite sensitive at IR.

Peter

[cpittman35]

Wow. Those are incredible shots.