Mars Jan 01 2010

[Space Bat]

This is my first stab at astro-imaging in earnest with new electrickery camera's, so go gently please. But positive critique to point in the right direction for improvment much appreciated.

Was taken with the equipment in sig..

Seeing was pretty good when I visually observed but - went after i set the cam up where light misty cloud set in which just rotated above me back and forth - pretty much everywhere else in the sky was void of clouds, just the bit I wanted around Mars...

Anyway roughly 400 images stacked where 200 yellow and 200 with no filter - all the other images with other filters were discarded as the clouds and seeing got worse.

Chris

[Kokatha man]

A good first-up effort there Chris.....and any significant improvement on this would then be considered a really good image irrespective of the amount of planetary imaging experience....!

I think you should turf the filters out though.....for imaging that is - you're using a one-shot colour cam (I use a DBK21) and putting filters in front of the cam's own onboard bayer matrix filters doesn't really make much sense.....they can be good for visual obbing of objects but unless you're running a mono cam where you'd need RGB filters they don't really have a place imho.

Given the conditions you've pulled a pretty good image: 4 minutes is considered "de rigeur" for the length of each avi when Mars imaging so if you can get that length of time without clouds you should end up with a good number of frames to work with.....because of the surface brightness of Mars it is also considered important to keep the histogram down below 100% somewhat.....if it's pulsing back and forth like it is in Oz at the moment (general seeing and elevation influences thereon too) you have to be carefull how high you set the histo before capturing lest you get "burnout" through overexposure and lose frames/detail thereby.....

Again, a darn good first-up effort!!!

[Clayton]

Lovely start Chris.

Re the clouds, all I can say is welcome to asto imaging

[Space Bat]

Thanks for the input KM

My thoughts on the filters, was if I capture images under different filtering that different contrasts and details could be stacked to better define surface differences...I guess this is primarily down to not totally understanding how to set up the camera As I can see under different filters differences in contrast...but the image was the first go at stacking, and I downloaded Gimp - but couldn't do anything with the image as the program is pretty complex to get your head round.

However I can not get over how simple things have now become, gone are the days of ruined films.. and bouts of crying.