Mars through ASI120MC clone = terrible!

[BrendanC]

Last night I took advantage of the single hour's worth of clear sky I've had for the past month and tested my T7C, a clone of the ASI120MC which uses the same chip and in fact runs off the ZWO drivers. I managed to capture Mars and everything seemed to go well - until I saw what came out of Registax...

Appalling, I'm sure you'll agree.

There's no colour information in, and I've looked at the histograms and it seems that the R, G and B channels all tend to zero throughout the capture. No idea what's going on there, but I'm prepared to tinker with things - turn up the levels, use a different capture mode etc - to see if I can fix that.

However, my main problem is with the pixelation. I have a strong feeling my lowly Bresser Mikrokular could have done a better job. I can see detail in there, but it's so very, very grainy.

I did a test with the moon a few days previously (ok, I lied, I've had two hours' worth of clear sky in the past month), and that looked ok:

So, can anyone offer any suggestions as to what could be going on here? Has anyone seen a similar issue and knows a fix? Is this a problem with settings, drivers, Registax - or maybe even my setup, which I'll admit is not ideal for solar system imaging (I got the T7C because I'm a cheapskate, also I thought I could use it for guiding but have the option for solar system imaging too). 

Setup is Skywatcher 130PDS, on an NEQ6 mount, and this was with the T7C through a Meade 3x Barlow. For the Mars shot, I captured 10,000 frames in Sharpcap at 320x240 (I also took other test captures at different resolutions, all came out the same). I made sure it was all focused properly before capture.

Or perhaps Mars is just beyond my setup and I should stick with Jupiter, Saturn, the moon, and DSOs through my DSLR?

Or maybe I shouldn't have been such a cheapskate and got an actual ZWO model instead?

I've also included the settings and histogram CSV file if they help

21_31_25.CameraSettings.txt

21_31_25.Histogram.csv

Any/all ideas welcome!

Thanks, Brendan

Edited October 15, 2020 by BrendanC

[Craney]

I think you need to De-Bayer the video  ( the colour information is in the file, but not shown in the display capture).  The  Bayer mask effectively gives the colour to your image, but the chip only records the signal at the pixel regardless of coloured mask above it. I think that is what you are seeing.

Programs like PIPP and AutoStakkert will do this.

 

Regards,

 

sean

[Paul M]

6 minutes ago, BrendanC said:

I managed to capture Mars and everything seemed to go well - until I saw what came out of Registax...

I didn't keep the results of my first and so far only efforts with My ASI178MC on Mars processed in Registax. Just some lime green artifacts, maybe related to a planetary image, maybe not! The AVI file seemed ok, not brilliant but usable I'd have thought.

I just put it down to another piece of software that doesn't understand me...

Anyway, to my experienced eye it looks like a debayering issue in your image. In my opinion the best way to solve planetary imaging problems is to image DSO's instead 🍺🤣

[Cosmic Geoff]

Looks like a de-bayering issue to me too.  Next time, save the file in .ser format and you will not have to de-bayer it.

[BrendanC]

Hey, great that everyone agrees! Looks like I'm onto something here.

I've used PIPP before a while back to do some conversions but never thought I'd need it again, so uninstalled it. I'll reinstall and try debayering.

Thanks again, really appreciate the help.

(Oh, and PS, I love this: In my opinion the best way to solve planetary imaging problems is to image DSO's instead )

[BrendanC]

Fab. Thanks again. I'm pleased with this - not going to win any awards but it's nice to know I can actually use the thing if I want to do more solar system stuff.

[Paul M]

Excellent. What a turnaround!

[BrendanC]

Yep - thanks to the help on this fab forum.