First Mars in 10 years!

[M110]

The last time I had a go imaging Mars was more than 10 years ago (with decidedly poor results)! Since then, I had a long break from astronomy and since returning to the hobby have focused almost entirely on visual observing (my ASI120MC-S camera has been used a total of twice in the two years I've owned it).

Anyway, I decided I had to have another go at Mars given the current opposition and here's my first attempt at processing data from last night's run.

 

I'm immensely chuffed as this is by far the best planetary image I've taken (although still far shy of some of the incredible ones I see here on SGL). Taken around 1am last night, through the C8, with Celestron X-Cel 2x barlow, with the ASI120MC-S.

Best 20% of 10000 frames stacked in AS3! and wavelets applied in Registax. Also tweaked the histogram a bit in Registax to adjust the brightness. No other processing so far, although I'm hoping to use this data to learn more about the processing side of things as I have no idea what the majority of options in both AS3! or Registax actually do! I also still have quite a bit more data to process (this is from 1 of 8x 10000 frame runs that I captured) so may be able to improve it further.

I loosely followed @JamesF 's guide to processing here: https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/184821-beginners-guide-to-stacking-planetary-images-with-autostakkert2/

If anyone has any ideas on anything else I should do processing wise or links to other good tutorials I'd be grateful.

 

[JeremyS]

Super image, @M110. Don't leave it so long next time 🙂

 

[callisto]

Nice result 👍

 

Mark

[Swoop1]

Nice image M110. It is very satisfying getting these types of images after ages of trying.

[Tommohawk]

That looks great!

The C8 does seem capable of great results given its a fairly modest aperture. If you have multiple image runs you might want to try combining them depending on how long they are of course. Last night I did lots of back to back 3 minute runs and then combine them in PIPP and ask PIPP to keep the best say 25%, and then put the resulting AVI through AS2/3 as  normal. 

As an eg, from my data last night it appears that 3 x 3 minute runs gave the best result.

[wornish]

Very nice indeed.

[M110]

Thank you all for the feedback

 

@Tommohawk thanks for the tip regarding PIPP, I hadn't realised it had  that functionality. I've gone back and taken the best 20% of frames from all my usable runs and combined them into a single AVI which I've processed the same as previously. Here's the result, which I think is marginally sharper than previously. I've also flipped the image to give the correct orientation as I realised I had it upside down!

[si@nite]

A very nice image of Mars well done!

[Andy ES]

Just been looking for Barlow info, and really pleased to see what’s possible for the exact set up I’ve been considering getting. Thanks.

[MarsG76]

Awesome detail...