1st Image of Mars and some Lunar Vistas

[Startrek (Martin)]

Thursday night in Sydney was suppose to be clear until midnight but due to high wispy cloud around I decided to give DSO imaging a miss and give Mars a crack for the first time before it moves to far away from us.Ive successfully imaged Jupiter and Saturn over the years but never Mars as its always turned out to be and orange fuzz ball.Conditions were average but there were moments of reasonable stability.



6'f6 Bintel GSO newt on an EQ6-R mount
Canon 600D DSLR

Televue 4 x Powermate
Captured with BYEOS
30fps sampling rate
ISO 1600
1500 AVI file
Stacked in Autostakkert 3
Sharpened in Registax 6


When I finished Mars, I noticed a beautiful 20% waxing moon descending in the west so swung around to capture some Lunar vistas before it disappeared behind my neighbours 2 storey roof line
Same details as above but obviously with out the 4 x Powermate. In hindsight I should have bumped up the ISO from 800 to 1600 like I did with Mars.



Unlike DSO imaging you can have a good night planetary imaging with just an hour outside







Comments most welcome


Thanks

[Saturnine (Jeff)]

Hi Martin

Not a bad start for a beginner.

I don't know if you realise it but your Mars images actually do show the dust storm that is currently obscuring parts of the martian terrain.
Also , as you probably know, longer focal ratios are more suited to lunar and planetary imaging but you've done well and they are very nice images regardless.

[Tulloch (Andrew)]

Excellent work Martin, before moving to a dedicated planetary camera I used to use my Canon 700D with BYE for planetary. These are excellent captures, and I'll just give you a few tips on your process. I assume you are capturing the LiveView images at 5x zoom? If not, read this.
https://www.astropix.com/html/i_astr...esolution.html

First, you should be able to capture Mars for 5 minutes without worrying about planetary rotation, this will give you more frames to choose from. Your focal ratio is pretty much bang on, the 4x PM should give you close to the optimal f/num = 5x pixel size for planetary imaging. In AS!3, you can use the sliders on the top LHS of the viewing window to reduce the size of the image you are stacking, that way you don't need to waste a lot of time stacking black space

Other that that, really impressive results

[multiweb (Marc)]

Very cool collection of pics Martin. Love the moon shots because I was out at roughly the same time and it's a great reference to see a wider record of the whole terminator. Puts everything into perspective.

[Startrek (Martin)]

Jeff,
Thanks for you kind comment, yes I was aware from other Mars posts there is a dust storm at the moment but decided to give it whirl anyway


Andrew,
Thanks for the tips
I started Planetary imaging 3 years ago and bought a couple of Jerry Lodriguss e books which got me up and running. I've snagged some good images of Jupiter and Saturn over the years but not Mars
My Canon 600D has a pixel pitch of 4.3uM and my newt has a focal length of 900mm so on a night of poor seeing I stick around f15 ( 2.5 x Powermate ) , average seeing f22 ( 4 x Powermate ) and good seeing f30 ( 5 x Powermate )
My set up is basic but limited and Mars is such a tiny planet compared to the other two.In hindsight I should have stuck around and shot more video sessions ( lucky imaging ) on it as it moved to the meridian or its highest altitiude that night.
Anyway fairly please I managed to process something out of it all
I only dabble in Planetary Imaging and Visual but still enjoy it on a basic level , but the majority of my time in the hobby is DSO imaging.



Marc
Thanks too
Much to my surprise the Lunar images came out quite good considering the moon was low at only 30 deg just above my neighbours roof line, and being a double brick 2 story home would still be emitting heat from a hot day, not a good recipe for any type of imaging.
Thanks again