MARS 27.08.20

[johnturley]

My first attempt at photographing Mars with my Canon EOS 6D digital SLR  and processing with Registax, taken at approx 00.30 on 27.08.2020 when the CM longitude was approx 250. By coincidence the CM longitude was almost exactly the same, and with Syrtis Major just coming into view, as when I made a drawing using the same telescope 32 years ago back on 17.08.1988, when Mars was slightly closer to the earth, and the features appear to correspond remarkedly well. Unfortunately (perhaps) I am of that age, when planetary drawings and images were usually presented with south at the top, and that is the way I am used to viewing planets, in particular Mars, to me the features do not look right with north at the top.

The attached photo was taken through my 14in Newtonian using eyepiece projection with a 12.4mm Plossl eyepiece, and a 1 minute movie with my EOS 6D, converted in PIPP, stacked and processed in Registax, and processed a bit further in Adobe Lightroom. I have only recently tried using Registax, but it looking at some other photos posted, it appears that I am not the only one who has a problem with Registax for some reason producing a bright ring around the following limb on Mars which was not there visually, and have not as yet figured out how to get rid of it. In addition I have not found a way of enlarging the saved image other than using a shorter focal length eyepiece, or adding a Barlow lens, and would welcome any suggestions, maybe I am missing something simple.  

 

Edited August 28, 2020 by johnturley

[CraigT82]

The bright limb on Mars is very common and is a sure sign that the sharpening is being pushed too far, however yours isn't too bad at all. The 'blue haze' over the north pole region is perhaps a bit more prominent than it should be, but at the scale presented I think it looks fine.  

For a bigger image you could try resizing 150 or 200% in photoshop or gimp, I'm sure it can be done in lightroom too but not sure how. Or do you mean you want to capture at a larger scale? In which case yes a shorter EP or barlow are pretty much your only options I think, I'm not really familiar with shooting with DSLRs.

Edited August 29, 2020 by CraigT82

[johnturley]

Had another go at photographing Mars, again at about 00.30 on 07.09.30 when the CM longitude was about 130, and viewing conditions were a but better. I've tried various methods of enlarging the image both in Lightroom and Registax, but none of these seemed to work, and the only means appeared to be using a shorter focal length eyepiece, a 9.7 mm Plossl in my eyepiece projection tube. Using the 'Drizzle' function to enlarge the stacked image in Registax was particularly hopeless, and resulted in am image with less detail than the original MVI file. 

The attached photo was taken again through my 14in Newtonian using eyepiece projection, and a 1 minute movie with my EOS 6D, converted in PIPP, stacked and processed in Registax, and processed a bit further in Adobe Lightroom.

There is still a bright ring around the following limb, but less pronounced compared to by previous image, and the South Polar Cap stands out better.  

Edited September 9, 2020 by johnturley