Mars 8/10/2020 - 178mm / 462mc

[AbsolutelyN]

The weather forecast was spot on tonight, clouded over on cue just before midnight. Managed a few images with both 462mc and 178mm but Mars was not as high in the sky as it could have been if it had stayed clear. From the data I got the 178MM easily wins for me personally. The 462mc attains far faster capture speeds. Had it at 220 frames per second compared to just 150 with red on the 178 dropping to just 60 for blue. In IR the 462 was easily more than 2.5x the frame rate of the 178 making the 462 superb for IR.  

The 462 had a slight yellow fringe at the edge. Not sure on the cause. It does however seem a lot more sensitive to blue than the 224mc. Both captured with 250pds, 5x explore scientific barlow at 6000mm. No derotation, all from 20% of 5000 frames. 178mm is 5000 per filter.  

178MM IR-RGB (20% of 5000 frames per channel)

 

462MC RGB (single image 20% of 5000 frames)

462MC RGB derotated 5 images (20% of 25,000 frames)

 

462MC IR (single image 20% of 5000 frames)

 

Final composite of IR-RGB

https://www.astrobin.com/c3d30l/?nc=user

Edited October 9, 2020 by AbsolutelyN

[alex_stars]

Fantastic images. Love the final composite!

[astroman001]

Great images. The red looks better than the IR, try a RRGB instead of IRRGB. 

Peter

[AbsolutelyN]

58 minutes ago, astroman001 said:

Great images. The red looks better than the IR, try a RRGB instead of IRRGB. 

Peter

Great idea, didn't think of that. Will have a play later.  Thanks

[PembrokeSteve]

Superb Images and topic presentation.

Regards,

Steve

[JeremyS]

Stunning images @AbsolutelyN!

[CraigT82]

Lovely images. The 462 RGB image looks a little out of focus possibly? But then the derotated one looks focused nicely so maybe not.

I also prefer the 178 image as the armospheric cloud details look much nice to me.

Very nice work! 👍

[AbsolutelyN]

23 minutes ago, CraigT82 said:

Lovely images. The 462 RGB image looks a little out of focus possibly? But then the derotated one looks focused nicely so maybe not.

I also prefer the 178 image as the armospheric cloud details look much nice to me.

Very nice work! 👍

Thanks Craig. Only a couple of hours clear last night so was experimenting. The 462 is a very impressive camera, certainly feels a step up from the 224 in capture speed, it's an absolute speed demon in IR, had almost 200 frames per second. I also suspect the colour is more accurate from the colour camera but the mono gives an almost three dimensional feel in comparison which I really like, just more aesthetically pleasing to my eye.  So I think I'm going to stick with the 178 for Mars for bit and push it as far as I can. Would have got a 290 but no stock anywhere and I like the wider field for lunar. I'm struggling with focus, very hard to see any difference with small focus changes so am guessing seeing just is not good enough. 

Edited October 9, 2020 by AbsolutelyN