Mars, 05/05/2005

[iceman (Mike)]

Hi guys.

Finally had a clear morning, and while waiting for Mercury to rise, I had a shot at Mars.

Unfortunately the seeing was shocking, 3/10. But not to be deterred, you know me

Details:
- 10" dob with ToUcam
- 5th May 2005, 4:55am
- Focal lengths shown in the image
- 10 fps
- Smaller shots, 1/33s 0 gain. Larger shots, 1/25s 15% gain

Most of the shots below are a stack of between 3 and 10 frames, out of 500-900 frames. That's right! After choosing an alignment frame that wasn't blurry due to bad seeing, at 95% quality it only found 3 or so frames worth stacking.



I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out, despite the bad seeing. It's a big step up from my previous attempt of Mars on the 15/03/2005, which were resampled 2x up.

Comments welcome.

[seeker372011 (Narayan)]

you are really the master of dob planetary imaging

that is a great set of images-despite the seeing-(Mars-the polar cap? looks like its wearing a toupee... )

I never got anything half as good even during the opposition a couple of years ago

looking forward to more over the next few months

[Comet Hunter]

With some decent conditions they would've turned out great Ice! The third top one is my pick.

[gaa_ian (Ian)]

Good one Mike ... I like the 4th Top one
Is quite close to what I saw visually !

[iceman (Mike)]

Thanks for the comments guys, i'm now quite looking forward to Mars getting closer and bigger. oh, and tracking

Mars-the polar cap? looks like its wearing a toupee...

lol I know what you mean.. it's to keep his head warm.. it's cold up there you know!

[h0ughy (David)]

excellent images given the difficulty! I have tried before and with the turbulance of the atmosphere not actually caputured anything except a blur and a few gig of hard drive space taken up.