My very first Mars

[FaB-Bo-Peep]

Hi everyone,

Last night I finished watching a film, looked out the window and Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and of course the moon were all visible! I quickly plonked my mount and scope in the front garden and roughly pointed it towards the NCP, (not even looking through the mounts scope), no alignment of any kind. 

The attached image is my first ever Mars and although it wont win any prizes I'm surprizingly pleased with how it's turned out. There appears to be a fair bit of surface detail and have I managed to capture one of the polar ice caps?

It's the result of a very short AVI file, captured in ASI Capture, stacked in AS!S, (because registax6 would not load the file), wavelets on the saved image then adjusted in Registax6 and final tweaks in Paintshop Pro.

I think ideally a 2 x barlow to give a bit more magnification might be advantageous.

What do you think to the image? As always constructive criticism is welcome. 

Scope is a Skywatcher 250PDS and camera is a ZWO ASI 120MC.

🙂

 

 

[Pete Presland]

Some really nice detail visible, despite the current small size of Mars.

[Jarvo]

Good image. Definitely try with a Barlow. Can’t wait to see the results 😊