My awful mars captures

[AstroNebulee]

Hi

I tried imaging Mars for the first time on Wednesday night with my skymax 127 on eq 3-2 mount with RA tracking and svbony sv105 planetary cam with sharpcap 3.2. There was no shaking of the mount.  I know Mars isn't best placed yet and wont reach conjunction until October but as mars was quite bright and quite high i wanted to try it.  The resulting images are awful but wanted peoples advice on this and how to get better.  Both of the histograms around 80-90% the blue side was quite low though as i thought the higher the histogram the better quality the image, I took over a 1000 frames on both, i know the exposure is a bit to high and think it would be better having a lower exposure and dimmer image to work with. Practice will make perfect but would like some advice please. I know I'm a complete buffoon with this haha

02_14_35.Histogram.csv 02_14_35.CameraSettings.txt 01_55_29.Histogram.csv 01_55_29.CameraSettings.txt

[paul mc c]

Its not easy,i know.....one thought,was your focus good?

[AstroNebulee]

2 minutes ago, paul mc c said:

Its not easy,i know.....one thought,was your focus good?

Hi

Yes i was thinking about my focus as mars appeared oval and eggshaped at times and when i was focusing and looking at the histogram it went up and thought this could be good position of focus, even when i got a regular circle it looked really blurry.  My webcam isn't the best i know and have achieved reasonable captures of Jupiter a few weeks ago.  One thing when looking on the laptop at the capture its not sharp atall like looking through the ep.

[paul mc c]

Mars will look egg shaped and like an oval at the minute, until it is at opposition.Why i ask about focus is the other night Mars looked really bad and was really bouncing about on my screen,i thought it was extroardinary bad seeing until i realised i forgot to re focus and the view i was getting was very similar to your pic.

In my pic you can see the oval egg shape Mars is at present.

[AstroNebulee]

4 minutes ago, paul mc c said:

Mars will look egg shaped and like an oval at the minute, until it is at opposition.Why i ask about focus is the other night Mars looked really bad and was really bouncing about on my screen,i thought it was extroardinary bad seeing until i realised i forgot to re focus and the view i was getting was very similar to your pic.

In my pic you can see the oval egg shape Mars is at present.

That is an amazing image of mars, wow id be proud of that.  Lovely views of the polar ice caps.  I can see what you mean about looking slightly oval and eggshaped. I will try to focus again when i next get clear skies but when I'm on sharpcap the image from my webcam isn't very clear and defined so its hard to see if its focused properly if you see what i mean.  What are your setting for sharpcap roughly, i know it differs from setup to setup but does the histogram have to be as high as you can get it or around 60% and is the dimmer the image the better for processing. I use AS3 then Registax the PS.

[Craney]

What are you using to stack the frames ??

Oops.. just read your last post.

What percentage of the frames are you using in the final stack ??....  

I think I can see the Polar ice cap in your initial  images, so your focus might be OK, but you should not have the blurriness ( looks like the image jumping around) after stacking.

 

Edited August 21, 2020 by Craney

[AstroNebulee]

6 minutes ago, Craney said:

What are you using to stack the frames ??

Oops.. just read your last post.

What percentage of the frames are you using in the final stack ??....  

I think I can see the Polar ice cap in your initial  images, so your focus might be OK, but you should not have the blurriness ( looks like the image jumping around) after stacking.

 

Thats ok, i only remembered to add what software i was using in my last post, you have better eyesight that i to see a polar ice cap, im using 20% of frames to stack.  I agree the image looks to be jumping around after the stack but the ser file that i use to stack looks bad also.

[CraigT82]

Something fishy in your log files, the fps and the exposure lengths don't match up. One says exposure was 125ms but was getting 30fps which isn't possible with that exposure time (1000/125=8fps max).

I'd try to get exposure time down as far as possible, down below 10ms if you can. Crank the gain up to achieve this. 

Keep histogram around 70% ideally to avoid overexposing any parts. Easy to brighten image afterwards but impossible to bring back blown out highlights. 

[AstroNebulee]

24 minutes ago, CraigT82 said:

Something fishy in your log files, the fps and the exposure lengths don't match up. One says exposure was 125ms but was getting 30fps which isn't possible with that exposure time (1000/125=8fps max).

I'd try to get exposure time down as far as possible, down below 10ms if you can. Crank the gain up to achieve this. 

Keep histogram around 70% ideally to avoid overexposing any parts. Easy to brighten image afterwards but impossible to bring back blown out highlights. 

Hi craig

Thats the log files that correspond with the captures i posted, it says 30 fps but from memory i was getting around 8fps i think and a hell of a lot of dropped frames.  I will try the settings/advice you mentioned, i think the centre of my images were overexposed on the captures i didn't post here.  My camera only has a few exposure settings around 5 settings but cant remember now.

[AstroNebulee]

Would it help to put the webcam and barlow straight in the back of the skymax 127 without the diagonal as its the stock one that came with the scope, was looking at the zwo 120asi120mc when i can afford it as seems much better than mine. Also when getting the histogram to 70% is that the red, green, blue and white all at 70% or different. As when I was trying to do these captures red, green abd white were high but blue was very low 

Edited August 21, 2020 by LeeHore7

[AstroNebulee]

I had another go at processing it in as3 and registax and put the ap squares as small as i could then placed then on the planet but not on the edges of it and came out slightly better i think, well, no jumping around.