Mars from Sydney, May 5th

[Camelopardalis]

My first planetary imaging experiment for a while, with a clear evening in Sydney with seeing coming and going.

C8 Edge HD on SE mount (alt az)
Baader Planetarium 2.25x Hyperion Barlow (for approx. f/22.5)
QHY5L-ii
Stacked in AS!2 and then colour balancing and a bit of a heavy hand with the sharpening afterwards

Feedback welcomed, I'd like to learn more :)

[Amaranthus]

At f/22.5, ~how many pixels was Mars occupying in your imager?

I have a Neximage 5 that was I was going to use with my C 8SE (non-Edge, alas) at f/25 (using a 2.5x PowerMate), and so was curious what I might expect. I just need to get a darned clear night!!

For further info (for my benefit :) ) what resolution and how many frames?

[AstroJason]

Wow Dunk, that's a great image of Mars mate, well done!

[Camelopardalis]

The image hasn't been scaled so about 100 pixels across, cropped here from the 640x480 ~30fps capture. At that focal length it's a challenge getting it on the chip at all :sadeyes: at least, on the SE mount :lol:

Btw, the Edge makes no difference for this, as the subject needs to be in the centre of the field to get on the chip :)

[Camelopardalis]

Cheers Jase! I'm pretty pleased with what was totally a spontaneous opportunity...I just went out for a quick look visually and could see plenty of markings flicking in and out with the seeing.

[Amaranthus]

Thanks Dunk. I ended up getting a bunch of nice 1000 frame videos of Mars and Saturn tonight (the seeing was pretty good, and the clouds largely stayed away), at both f/10 and f/25. It'll be interesting to see how they process (I suspect I'll post up the result later this week).

By the way, any particular reason you've used Autostakkert! rather than Registax?

[Camelopardalis]

Nice one Barry, look forward to your results :thumbsup:

I've used Autostakkert! because it's mostly automated :D might try Registax though, I'm just not sure I get the wavelets thing :confused2:

[racecar]

Thanks so much for posting this. Last night, I was looking at Mars with my 6 inch Dob and I could see a dark blob on the upper left. While I was watching it, I saw a white dot appear on the upper left of the dark blob.

Intermittently, I could notice a small crescent on the bottom right.

All of these details went in and out of focus, but I was watching it for 20 minutes or so, and the features were consistently in the same positions.

I tried using filters, but I found that I got more contrast with no filters.

I was worried that the dark patch may have been a trick of my eyes.

The moment I saw your photograph, it was exactly what I had seen. I knew I had really seen the surface features on Mars for the first time.

Now I want to make a Schupmann for the next return of Mars.

Thankyou.

[AG Hybrid]

nice one!

[Camelopardalis]

Thanks! You were not being tricked, given the right conditions there's lots to see, assuming it's showing us an interesting face of course :D

[killswitch]

Good planetary shots Dunk. Youve inspired me to hack up my old logitech webcam.

[Star Catcher]

Thumbs up Dunk, well done!
Ted

[Camelopardalis]

Thanks chaps! The old girl only comes around every two years or so, so I was determined to get something :D

Just been going over the data again with Registax, and playing with the wavelets...

The one on the left is what I've eeked out of Registax, using the top 13% best frames. The one on the right was generated by AS!2 using the top 13% best frames. Only tweaking beyond that is a little extra red added to both. Not sure why they come out anaemic otherwise, maybe the colour balance was off in my capture.

[Amaranthus]

Registax one looks a little sharper. The wavelets are a dark, arcane art!

I'd never tried AS!2, so I fired it up yesterday. It wouldn't accept my 1.2 GB AVI (uncompressed) - complained the file size was too large, even though I had the spare RAM to cover it. Will have to persevere.

[Amaranthus]

Hah, problem solved! "Castrator", written by the author of AS!2, took a 3.2GB file down to 105MB. Brilliant!!!!

http://www.astrokraai.nl/castrator.php

I can now capture routinely in 1280" resolution and not worry about the mammoth file size (lossless AVI), which will make it much easier to keep the planet within the chip's FOV!

[Astro_Bot]

Good tip. I have been using Phatch (Linux) and Ninox (Windows) to achieve that goal, but they only work on discrete images, not videos. Castrator should make things a lot easier.

[Camelopardalis]

I think you're right, the Registax one has it by a hair, or my eyesight is worse than I thought :lol: but the AS!2 is pretty close for a largely automated result.

Btw, I use PIPP to centre and crop the subject from the source files into much smaller files. The raw source videos tend to be about 600MB for 100 frames at 640x480.

[Amaranthus]

Here's a quick snap of Mars, after castrating, running through AS!2, and a few touches in Paint.NET. I reckon I can do a LOT better (maybe with Registax wavelet magic, plus I have about 10 videos to work through to find the best one), but it's a start...

Was taken with my 8SE and NexImage 5, a stack of 250 frames.

[Camelopardalis]

Nice one Barry! Did you have Sharpen and HQ checked?

[Amaranthus]

Yeah, but the sharpened version looked too smooth and unrealistic. Anyway, don't take the above as anything more that a very early 'draft' :D - I've got a lot of mucking about to do yet before I get a result I'm happy with!

[Camelopardalis]

Shows promise...to the wavelets and beyond!

[Astro_Bot]

Wavelets will indeed work wonders - you won't believe your own eyes!

Experiment methodically and keep notes to learn what works in Wavelets. Hint: best settings vary dramatically depending on target and data quality/nature.