OCTOBER 6TH, MARS OBSERVED AT CLOSEST APPROACH TO EARTH THIS EVENING

[Stu]

10 hours ago, geoflewis said:

Not bad Stu, I've had worse images than that from a graded and stacked video session....

Thanks Geof. I managed to take a short 12 second video and stacked it, though I have little idea what I’m doing 🤣. I blundered my way through PIPP and AutoStakkert then just did a bit of tweaking in PS Express in my phone. Looks a bit smoother but no more detail really. I guess I need more frames and a lot more processing skill!

The detail visible in the 4” was very good when the seeing steadied. It’s wired how the planet didn’t seem to be shimmering much, but the detail levels still came and went. It got worse as the night went on, I had to back the Mag off down to x150 towards the end when Syrtis Major was beginning to show clearly.

[Chris]

23 minutes ago, Stu said:

Thanks Geof. I managed to take a short 12 second video and stacked it, though I have little idea what I’m doing 🤣. I blundered my way through PIPP and AutoStakkert then just did a bit of tweaking in PS Express in my phone. Looks a bit smoother but no more detail really. I guess I need more frames and a lot more processing skill!

The detail visible in the 4” was very good when the seeing steadied. It’s wired how the planet didn’t seem to be shimmering much, but the detail levels still came and went. It got worse as the night went on, I had to back the Mag off down to x150 towards the end when Syrtis Major was beginning to show clearly.

Brilliant to see you imaging, Stu  That's some impressive image scale for starters! Trust me, if you now load the image into Registax 6, and play with the wavelet sliders, you'll be surprised how much more detail you can pull out. Those wavelets seem to posses some kind of Voodoo magic I swear. 

[Chris]

Thanks for the report Paul., I missed all the action as I was working late, but it was cloudy anyway so at least the weather didn't rub it in lol

[paulastro]

3 hours ago, Rob said:

Much to my pain. I've not been able to observe Mars yet due to a leg & arm injury for the past 7 weeks. I'm now in the position to start again, the weather has been awful down here but shows promise for the weekend (small window) so I'm keeping everything crossed.

I had info showing the 13th to be maximum, but we have the whole month & beyond of course... just so desperate to get out now.

 

Rob, opposition is on 13th, but closest approach was 6th.  All to do with Mars's orbit.

Edited October 7, 2020 by paulastro

[markse68]

2years to save up for a bigger scope  

 

 

Edited October 7, 2020 by markse68
oops wrong years 🤦‍♂️

[happy-kat]

We did want to see this but cloudy for us, great to read some of you did manage.

[geoflewis]

4 hours ago, Stu said:

Thanks Geof. I managed to take a short 12 second video and stacked it, though I have little idea what I’m doing 🤣. I blundered my way through PIPP and AutoStakkert then just did a bit of tweaking in PS Express in my phone. Looks a bit smoother but no more detail really. I guess I need more frames and a lot more processing skill!

The detail visible in the 4” was very good when the seeing steadied. It’s wired how the planet didn’t seem to be shimmering much, but the detail levels still came and went. It got worse as the night went on, I had to back the Mag off down to x150 towards the end when Syrtis Major was beginning to show clearly.

That's pretty darned good for 12 secs of video. I'm shooting sets of R-G-B-IR at 3mins per filter and then rinse and repeat, 3,4 or 5 times to extract the very best that conditions offer. If I may offer a couple of suggestions to further improve your image:

Take the image into Registax 6 and perform a RGB channel alignment which will significantly reduce, maybe even iliminate the red / blue fringing at the bottom / top of the image (NB you can also do this in Photoshop, Gimp, Affinity photo, indeed probably just about any image processing software). Whilst in Registax have a play with the wavelets to see if the image will sharpen at all, but don't push to hard.

I haven't processed my data from last night, but fyi as a taster, here is the best 30% of one of the IR AVIs, graded and stacked in Autostakkert (AS3!) then waveles applied in Registax 6.

I'll post the final colour image on a separate thread when I get it done.

Regards, Geof

Edited October 7, 2020 by geoflewis

[Chris]

@Stu  I thought I would have a go at running you Mars PNG through Registax but unfortunately ran out of dynamic range pretty quick with a PNG. I think it's too compressed. I could try again if you have a Tiff or Raw file?  

[Stu]

38 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

That's pretty darned good for 12 secs of video. I'm shooting sets of R-G-B-IR at 3mins per filter and then rinse and repeat, 3,4 or 5 times to extract the very best that conitions offer. If I may offer a couple of suggestions to further improve your image:

Take the image into Registax 6 and perform a RGB channel alignment which will significantly reduce, maybe even iliminate the red / blue fringing at the bottom / top of the image (NB you can also do this in Photoshop, Gimp, Affinity photo, indeed probably just about any image processing software). Whilst in Registax have a play with the wavelets to see if the image will sharpen at all, but don't push to hard.

I haven't processed my data from last night, but fyi as a taster, here is the best 30% of one of the IR AVIs, graded and stacked in Autostakkert (AS3!) then waveles applied in Registax 6.

I'll post the final colour image on a separate thread when I get it done.

Regards, Geof

Impressive Geof! Looks forward to seeing the end result.

I’ve done the best I can, but whenever I apply any wavelets I get a horrid blue white rim around most of the planet. I’ll try again with a longer video and see if that helps.

The RGB align seemed to work well anyway. Thanks!

[Stu]

33 minutes ago, Lockie said:

@Stu  I thought I would have a go at running you Mars PNG through Registax but unfortunately ran out of dynamic range pretty quick with a PNG. I think it's too compressed. I could try again if you have a Tiff or Raw file?  

This is the original video if you want to have a bash Chris. Might just not be good enough to do much with.

I think the attached file is a tif, but doing this all from my phone so might not be!

[Chris]

Cool, I'll give it a bash after dinner Stu. 

[jock1958]

Despite seeing being good the albedo features were not as defined as last week and south polar cap was virtually indistinguishable, I think the windy conditions didn’t help.  Another rough sketch below.

[John]

Interesting comments on the seeing conditions for observing Mars last night.

I found the contrast of features quite strong for the first hour of observing and then things gradually went downhill from there until Mars was showing that "viewing through a running stream" look

Checking out some close double stars proved that the seeing had taken a plunge so I packed the scopes away.

It was good to see Mars at it's closest this opposition but I'm hoping for better seeing for a longer period in sessions to come when Mars will still be a pretty decent angular diameter.

I still intend to try and catch Phobos and / or Diemos with my 12 inch dob when they are furthest from Mars. They do move around the planet quite quickly though so I need to be on my toes to catch them at max elongation from their host planet.

 

[scarp15]

Retained clear skies in Newcastle, waited until Mars was transiting approach due south and entirely away from roof thermals. Became another terrific encounter, very much the surface details as described by others and Mare Chromium encompassing a tiny south polar cap, was mottled with texture. I found that I could go to 300x, but prefered to step back to 171x with my 7mm DeLite and was using a 200mm dob. Interspersed with a look at Uranus, kept going until 1.30am when emerging cloud finally built and caused some disruption. 

[Stu]

18 minutes ago, John said:

until Mars was showing that "viewing through a running stream" look

Interesting John, and just shows how conditions vary by location. My conditions definitely dropped off after a couple of hours, but even at 2.30am when I packed up I wasn’t getting the ‘running stream’ effect. The limb remained quite well defined, but the contrast and detail was not there at the higher powers, needing me to back off a bit. Still good at x150 to x200 though, handy to be using the zoom.

[scarp15]

12 minutes ago, John said:

Interesting comments on the seeing conditions for observing Mars last night.

I found the contrast of features quite strong for the first hour of observing and then things gradually went downhill from there until Mars was showing that "viewing through a running stream" look

Checking out some close double stars proved that the seeing had taken a plunge so I packed the scopes away.

It was good to see Mars at it's closest this opposition but I'm hoping for better seeing for a longer period in sessions to come when Mars will still be a pretty decent angular diameter.

I still intend to try and catch Phobos and / or Diemos with my 12 inch dob when they are furthest from Mars. They do move around the planet quite quickly though so I need to be on my toes to catch them at max elongation from their host planet.

 

Just interested if you use a filter John (or other readers)? Since formally owning a Televue Bandmate planetary filter used for Jupiter years ago, I do not have any planetary filters, perhaps an applicable filter may draw out subtle features? Experiencing good seeing, contrast between 'dark fingers' such as Mare Cimmerium and Syrtis Minor among other areas was strongly defined and brief periods of ochre shading were distinguishable, good to learn if a filter could necessarily enhance and draw more surface detailing.

[John]

5 minutes ago, scarp15 said:

Just interested if you use a filter John (or other readers)? Since formally owning a Televue Bandmate planetary filter used for Jupiter years ago, I do not have any planetary filters, perhaps an applicable filter may draw out subtle features? Experiencing good seeing, contrast between 'dark fingers' such as Mare Cimmerium and Syrtis Minor among other areas was strongly defined and brief periods of ochre shading were distinguishable, good to learn if a filter could necessarily enhance and draw more surface detailing.

No, I don't use a filter.

 

[Chris]

@Stu  I tried the de ringing tool in registax to try and remove the Blue ring but that didn't work. but had slightly better luck with the Hue-Chroma tool in GIMP:

 

Bonus giant Drizzle over process version 

Edited October 7, 2020 by Lockie

[geoflewis]

2 hours ago, Stu said:

Impressive Geof! Looks forward to seeing the end result.

I’ve done the best I can, but whenever I apply any wavelets I get a horrid blue white rim around most of the planet. I’ll try again with a longer video and see if that helps.

The RGB align seemed to work well anyway. Thanks!

Hi Stu,

Yes, the RGB align worked well. The bright ring around Mars limb is a problem for everyone, even the best imagers suffer with it, but with more data there is more opportunity to 'manage' it. Sometimes I find that Registax wavelets just can't get a handle on the data, so that may be the case with your image. It's definitely worth shooting longer videos, so good luck with that.

[John]

22 minutes ago, Stu said:

Interesting John, and just shows how conditions vary by location. My conditions definitely dropped off after a couple of hours, but even at 2.30am when I packed up I wasn’t getting the ‘running stream’ effect. The limb remained quite well defined, but the contrast and detail was not there at the higher powers, needing me to back off a bit. Still good at x150 to x200 though, handy to be using the zoom.

I'm not surprised though Stu. I've known significant variations in seeing and / or transparency between my garden and my society observing site which is only 5 miles away.

Quite often I've found my garden better when I get home from a society session though it's sometimes the other way around. 

Very local factors can make quite a difference as well as more distant ones.

 

 

[geoflewis]

9 minutes ago, John said:

Very local factors can make quite a difference as well as more distant ones.

This is so true John. After the hot September days (remember those) my attempts to image Mars were challenged by heat radiating off my and my neighbour's roofs. When I started a session Mars was rising over my house roof and was a boiling mess, but when it moved over the gap between the 2 houses, everything snapped into focus and I got really good results. That gap gave me about 1 hour imaging time, after which Mars moved over my neighbour's house and became a boiling mess again.

Edited October 7, 2020 by geoflewis

[markse68]

26 minutes ago, John said:

I'm not surprised though Stu. I've known significant variations in seeing and / or transparency between my garden and my society observing site which is only 5 miles away.

Quite often I've found my garden better when I get home from a society session though it's sometimes the other way around. 

Very local factors can make quite a difference as well as more distant ones.

 

 

it was probably the jetstream John- I checked it before going out and it was in a u shape dipping just south of me in London but higher to the west. Tonight it looks dreadful all over! 

[Stu]

25 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

When I started a session Mars was rising over my house roof and was a boiling mess, but when it moved over the gap between the 2 houses, everything snapped into focus and I got really good results

I get exactly the same thing Geof. I observe from my garden (which fortunately is long) looking back over the houses to the South. I get two good opportunities when the planets are over the gaps between our house and the neighbours. Mars seems much less affected by this because of its higher altitude currently which helps.

[Stu]

7 minutes ago, markse68 said:

it was probably the jetstream John- I checked it before going out and it was in a u shape dipping just south of me in London but higher to the west. Tonight it looks dreadful all over! 

I must just have been south of it then Mark, definitely wasn’t affecting my views which I’m grateful for 👍😁

[Stu]

36 minutes ago, John said:

I'm not surprised though Stu. I've known significant variations in seeing and / or transparency between my garden and my society observing site which is only 5 miles away.

Quite often I've found my garden better when I get home from a society session though it's sometimes the other way around. 

Very local factors can make quite a difference as well as more distant ones.

 

 

No, very true John. I guess I’m used to being on the poor end of the seeing, being up near the big smoke, but I got lucky last night.