Mars, after all!

[Paul M]

Another "another Mars" thread prompted me to look back at my one and only Mars imaging attempt way back on September 19th. I remember the session well, I'd taken my scope away from home and forgotten the counterweights so hung the wheel change jack off the counterweight bar. A bit too light but not as light as thin air.

Then dew set in big time. Everything was dripping. I was imaging through a fogged corrector plate - which made focusing a guessing game.

I did get a few thousand frames of Mars with my Celestron 127 Mak and ASI178MC camera. It's quite a nice planetary combo but I think I'll try a Barlow in there next time.

Registax just played with my head so tried Autostakert, hmmm... So gave up. I thought I'd deleted the whole folder but found it again this morning. Tried AS3 again and set it to "Idiot"  mode but stopped short of "Read the Manual".  Right, it stacked and did some stuff but the image was like grey blancmange with a bit of Vimto poured on it. I imported that into Registax to do some of the Wavelets thing using my own scientific algorithm. It did sharpen up and so I tried to repair the colour in PhotoShop. Not sure if it helped or not.

Here it is, if only to make you all feel better about your own Mars images. I won't thank you for looking, anyone that's got this far deserves pity 

 

 

Edited October 15, 2020 by Paul M

[happy-kat]

If be happy to capture that, and once you have the file you get chance to revisit it to extract more at another time

[Paul M]

40 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

If be happy to capture that

I think you are being too generous! But, seriously, planetary processing seems so much harder than DSO's. Not least because of learning new software but also because I found with this image that I had to leave it for a while and return and let my brain re-analyse what was actually visible. My eyes got tired doing this image!

44 minutes ago, happy-kat said:

and once you have the file you get chance to revisit it to extract more at another time

Yes indeed, and I just hope to have better data in future!

Unfortunately I've been clouded out for the whole of Mars (Mars' Marses, Mars's?) opposition

[happy-kat]

The image has detail on it just the colour balance is a little off I think, and it is loads more than I have had a chance to get yet.