Mars August 10th

[neil phillips]

Taken after I finished Jupiter. Showing Syrtis major and Hellas basin

Edited August 10, 2022 by neil phillips

[dweller25]

Really superb given it’s distance 👍

[Kon]

That's a great capture. It seems you had nice seeing this morning.

All my Mars images have a bright ring on the light side. How do you deal with this or don't you observe it in your processing.

[Zeta Reticulan]

Very nice. I believe Mars is barely eight arc seconds in diameter at the moment. I could see Syrtis Major with my 127mm Mak' at 257x.

[johnturley]

57 minutes ago, neil phillips said:

Taken after I finished Jupiter. Showing Syrtis major and Hellas basin

Amazing photo considering Mars is currently only about 8 arc seconds in diameter, its as good as I got with a 22 arc second disc in October 2020. 

Which scope and camera/barlow combination was it taken with.

John 

[neil phillips]

9 minutes ago, dweller25 said:

Really superb given it’s distance 👍

Yes still pretty small David just over 8 arcsecs I believe.

[ONIKKINEN]

Crazy detail for such a small disk!

Is that a polar icecap barely peeking around the limb to the north or am i imagining it?

[neil phillips]

3 minutes ago, Kon said:

That's a great capture. It seems you had nice seeing this morning.

All my Mars images have a bright ring on the light side. How do you deal with this or don't you observe it in your processing.

Hi Kon even under reasonably good seeing. The ring often appears. I used image analyzer there is a clone tool on there. Its tricky you have to get right to the edge. But still not touch the planet. 

[neil phillips]

Thanks zeta R

[neil phillips]

16 minutes ago, johnturley said:

Amazing photo considering Mars is currently only about 8 arc seconds in diameter, its as good as I got with a 22 arc second disc in October 2020. 

Which scope and camera/barlow combination was it taken with.

John 

Hi John here are the stats

 245mm Orion optics UK 1/10TH PV Antares 1/30th pv secondary.  Newtonian F6.3

QHY 462 C camera Baader UV IR Cut Filter Baader Q Barlow. SW EQ5 PRO Mount

Cheers

 

Edited August 10, 2022 by neil phillips

[neil phillips]

12 minutes ago, ONIKKINEN said:

Crazy detail for such a small disk!

Is that a polar icecap barely peeking around the limb to the north or am i imagining it?

Not your imagination. It is indeed a polar cap

Thanks

 

Edited August 10, 2022 by neil phillips

[johnturley]

15 minutes ago, neil phillips said:

Hi John here are the stats

 245mm Orion optics UK 1/10TH PV Antares 1/30th pv secondary.  Newtonian F6.3

QHY 462 C camera Baader UV IR Cut Filter Baader Q Barlow. SW EQ5 PRO Mount

Cheers

 

Thanks Neil

I was also amazed how large the image was considering Mars currently only has an 8 arc second disc.

I've taken a few photos of Jupiter and Saturn through my Esprit 150 this week using a ZWO ASI 462 camera (which I assume is similar to the QHY 462) and Sharpcap, but still got a relatively small image size using a 2x Barlow. I tried a Tele Vue 5x Powermate (which I've recently purchased), and although I then got fairly large images, they were very blurred, and I couldn't improve them that much after processing them in Registax and Lightroom.  I'm very much a novice with Sharpcap, so maybe I'm not doing something right.

Is the Baader UV IR Cut Filter similar to the Baader Neodymium (I have one of these), maybe I should try it to see if it improves the view. 

John 

[neil phillips]

38 minutes ago, johnturley said:

Thanks Neil

I was also amazed how large the image was considering Mars currently only has an 8 arc second disc.

I've taken a few photos of Jupiter and Saturn through my Esprit 150 this week using a ZWO ASI 462 camera (which I assume is similar to the QHY 462) and Sharpcap, but still got a relatively small image size using a 2x Barlow. I tried a Tele Vue 5x Powermate (which I've recently purchased), and although I then got fairly large images, they were very blurred, and I couldn't improve them that much after processing them in Registax and Lightroom.  I'm very much a novice with Sharpcap, so maybe I'm not doing something right.

Is the Baader UV IR Cut Filter similar to the Baader Neodymium (I have one of these), maybe I should try it to see if it improves the view. 

John 

I gained some size by doing 1.5x drizzle on registax. I use a fairly large Newtonian because it often will do better than smaller scopes Even a 150 Esprit. Don't underestimate what larger reflectors can do. My Classical cassegrain is supremely sharp. But even that at 7.3" inches cant compete with the bigger Newtonian. To match this you will need a C.9.25 Minimum. 

And the UV IR Cut filters are used as colour balance filters. UV IR wavelengths Will mess up the colour balance of colour images. So the IR UV cut is to prevent that. And you get a natural colour balance. 

[neil phillips]

Another with Syrtis major and Hellas basin and polar cap coming more into view

[Kon]

1 hour ago, neil phillips said:

Hi Kon even under reasonably good seeing. The ring often appears. I used image analyzer there is a clone tool on there. Its tricky you have to get right to the edge. But still not touch the planet. 

Do you mind explaining in a few brief steps what you do? Or any links to look up?

[si@nite]

Nice one Neil small yet well detailed!

[neil phillips]

1 minute ago, Kon said:

Do you mind explaining in a few brief steps what you do? Or any links to look up?

There is no set procedure Kon. i try techniques i learned over the years. sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt. And i have to try again. Others may have easier techniques. So worth asking around. But if you pm me. I could try and explain in detail. But it wont be easy. First you will have to download the software i use. second learn the controls and how to do the techniques. I dont mind you pming. But as i said. it can be a bit hit and miss. And will take longer than a few minuets going through it all. It mostly involved using a clone brush To remove some of the edge. And then selectively darkening the edge. After it had been isolated with another brush. 

[neil phillips]

8 minutes ago, si@nite said:

Nice one Neil small yet well detailed!

Cheers SImon

[kev]

Great images

[geoflewis]

Those are 2 excellent Mars images Neil.

[Kon]

42 minutes ago, neil phillips said:

There is no set procedure Kon. i try techniques i learned over the years. sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt. And i have to try again. Others may have easier techniques. So worth asking around. But if you pm me. I could try and explain in detail. But it wont be easy. First you will have to download the software i use. second learn the controls and how to do the techniques. I dont mind you pming. But as i said. it can be a bit hit and miss. And will take longer than a few minuets going through it all. It mostly involved using a clone brush To remove some of the edge. And then selectively darkening the edge. After it had been isolated with another brush. 

Thanks. I will try read around and if I cannot get anywhere I will drop you a message.

[morimarty]

Thats a lovely Mars image Neil. I think we were both imaging it at the same time. I know It.s not a easy one to process. Top stuff mate.

[neil phillips]

5 hours ago, geoflewis said:

Those are 2 excellent Mars images Neil.

Its been a while since Mars had my attention. Its very enjoyable Cheers Geoff

[neil phillips]

4 hours ago, morimarty said:

Thats a lovely Mars image Neil. I think we were both imaging it at the same time. I know It.s not a easy one to process. Top stuff mate.

Its weird to think others out there doing the same thing at the same time at that un godly hour Martyn.

cheers

[johnturley]

17 hours ago, neil phillips said:

I gained some size by doing 1.5x drizzle on registax. I use a fairly large Newtonian because it often will do better than smaller scopes Even a 150 Esprit. Don't underestimate what larger reflectors can do. My Classical cassegrain is supremely sharp. But even that at 7.3" inches cant compete with the bigger Newtonian. To match this you will need a C.9.25 Minimum. 

And the UV IR Cut filters are used as colour balance filters. UV IR wavelengths Will mess up the colour balance of colour images. So the IR UV cut is to prevent that. And you get a natural colour balance. 

Thanks Neil

I've tried reprocessing one of my images in Registax using the Drizzle function, and although it gave a larger image while in Registax, when I saved it back to my laptop as a JPEG file, the image size was exactly the same, am I missing something here.

I gather you can also increase the image size in Sharpcap while imaging by reducing the capture area from the full 1936 x 1096, but surely this would reduce the quality of the image, so not sure why you would want to do this, surely better to use an optical method for increasing the image size, such as a Barlow/Powermate.

I am finding however that my 5x Powermate is too great for Jupiter and Saturn, giving a large blurred image (which I couldn't improve much by processing), and have got better results from an old Meade 2x Barlow (may replace it with the 2.5x Powermate), although the 5x Powermate might be ok for Mars, where you get a very small, but very bright image, and I notice from your website that you have used a 5x Powermate for some Mars images.  

One of the reasons why I tend to use the Esprit 150 for planetary imaging rather than the Newtonian  (apart from the fact that the Esprit gives sharper images most of the time) is because of the mounting arrangement in my observatory shed. The Esprit is mounted piggyback on my 14 in Newtonian, which is on a massive fork mount made by Rob Miller of Astro Systems (Luton) in the 1980's, but does suffer from the problem of not being able to clamp the polar axis. The focusing mount of the Esprit is situated close to centre of gravity of the mount, so not too much of a problem, but adding heavy equipment to the Newtonian focus can result in things swinging out of control, and also the USB cable to the ZWO 462 might not be long enough.

I have however in previous years taken some reasonably good planetary images through the Newtonian using eyepiece projection with a Canon 6D Digital SLR Camera (see attached image of Mars from September 2020 showing Syrtis Major and the SPC).

John 

Edited August 11, 2022 by johnturley