Mars - 14 October 2020

[Ouroboros]

Yet another image of Mars.   I haven’t done any planetary imaging for years so this is a bit of a voyage of rediscovery for me. Plus I don’t really have the right kit for it. A Canon 450D is not the best camera for the job, but EOS Backyard makes a reasonable job of getting a video from the camera. The image was taken with my Skywatcher 200mm reflector with a x5 Tele Vue Powermate.  This image is the result of an evening cramming up on videos of how to use Autostakkert and RegiStax - also both downloaded this evening.  

I’ve seen much better images from others on SGL, but I’m reasonably pleased with this one. The seeing was pretty dreadful on the 14 October and the planet was shimmering all over the place. So what I see in this image is far more than I could see through the telescope. This image is the result of stacking the best 10% of a 1000 image AVI movie.  I’m wondering is it  possible to combine several movie files in Autostakkert  to extract more image files?  Suggestions for improvements to processing welcome too. Thanks. 

Edited October 21, 2020 by Ouroboros

[JeremyS]

Nice job 👍🏻 I 

[Sunshine]

Nice Mars shot!

[ShrewView]

That's a good image. There's certainly some nice surface detail there; you can definitely be pleased with that.

Can you combine your files in pipp before running through AS3? That would give you an avi file with more good frames. You might try stacking more than 10% too. Worth experimenting as I sometimes find more can improve things. I often try 20 or 30%.   

I haven't seen mars for weeks it seems with the constant cloud, so its good to see.

[Ouroboros]

@ShrewView OK, thanks. I didn’t use PIPP at all because I wasn’t sure what it did apart from placing the planet centrally in the image prior to being processed in AS3. Is that right?
   It sounds from what you say though that more than one AVI fill can be loaded into PIPP. I’ll try that.  
   I got Autostakkert to process 10%, 25%, 50% and 75% of the frames.  The 10% data was marginally better then the 25% hence my choice.  But I could try a few more. 

Another question. have a handful of videos taken over a period of two hours or so.  Over what time period can Mars images be combined before planetary rotation becomes a problem?   

[ShrewView]

Yes if you've got a few video files then add them to pipp and there is an option on the first screen "join mode" that should then put all the images from those into one output file that you can then put through As3 to select your best from. Select the tick box for planetary.

I've only merged a set of files that are about 15 or 20mins apart in pipp and that seems ok but 2 hours would be too much. There is another piece of free software winjupos that can derotate and stack separate files and I think I read you can probably get about an hours worth on mars with that, but I've only used it once and wasn't convinced it helped in my case. If you've got data taken over several hours you could always separately process those files an make an animation showing the rotation of the planet?

There's a good video that someone recently posted (apologies i can't remember who) by Damian Peach about how he goes about planetary astrophotography which does include a bit about processing which is definitely worth a look. There should be a few things on youtube about pipp too if you want more detail on that.

 

 

[Ouroboros]

@ShrewView great. Thanks. I’ll have a go at that.  

[Ouroboros]

OK I had a go at using PIPP to combine 5 AVI files all taken over about 15 minutes - 5000 frames in all.  All seemed to go swimmingly through autostakkert and Registax until I started sharpening when I noticed the strange rectangular artefact in the image below.  I've slightly exaggerated the sharpening  it to make it more obvious. It doesn't appear to be in the original videos, but I can just see it in the TIFF output file from Autostakkert.  Any ideas?

[Ibbo!]

I got that with an image of mine and found that if I reduced the number of align boxes it helped ,then I tried a few manual points (7 I think) of various sizes around features I could see and the lines did not appear.

[Ouroboros]

1 minute ago, Ibbo! said:

I got that with an image of mine and found that if I reduced the number of align boxes it helped ,then I tried a few manual points (7 I think) of various sizes around features I could see and the lines did not appear.

Thanks. I did wonder about that. On this occasion I did manual selection of the align boxes whereas before I used auto select. I’ll give it another go. 

[ShrewView]

Looks like AS hasn't aligned them quite right. I tend to use around half a dozen manually placed points on the edges of whatever strong features I can see within the disc.  Don't know if that's the best way but seems to work. As mentioned above maybe pick different point size. i last used 48 and that worked out.

[Ouroboros]

Yes @ShrewView. This time I used the automatically selected points, size 48. I think it generated about 30 if I recall correctly. Anyway, the weird box has gone!  This is the new image. It's the best 25% of 5 x 1000 frame AVI files.  So it's using 12.5 times more data than my first attempt. I don't think it is very much better in that it hasn't brought out more features. Maybe it is slightly less noisy.  An interesting exercise anyway.  Thank for all the help.   

Edited October 23, 2020 by Ouroboros

[orion25]

Hi, Ouroboros. That's a nice image. I've been following Mars for a little while now and determined that there's nothing like good seeing when trying to image. Waiting until the atmosphere is stable and Mars is at its highest altitude is key to getting good detail with whatever equipment you use. Let that be your foundation and go from there and don't be afraid to try new things. I got my best image of Mars after weeks of trying when I had a night of good seeing and the Red Planet was at a good altitude.

All the best!

Reggie

[Ouroboros]

On 24/10/2020 at 13:21, orion25 said:

Hi, Ouroboros. That's a nice image. I've been following Mars for a little while now and determined that there's nothing like good seeing when trying to image. Waiting until the atmosphere is stable and Mars is at its highest altitude is key to getting good detail with whatever equipment you use. Let that be your foundation and go from there and don't be afraid to try new things. I got my best image of Mars after weeks of trying when I had a night of good seeing and the Red Planet was at a good altitude.

All the best!

Reggie

Thanks. For me it’s a matter of snatching the rare moment regardless of sky quality when me, my scope and anything approaching clear skies come together in the same place at the same time. I just have to make the best if it.    I think on this last visit to Cornwall I got one night (amongst 10) where imaging was remotely worth trying.  But of course you’re right - good seeing is vital.