First Mars RGB

[matt]

Well..the seeing and general weather conditions decided they'd not be friendly:(

But I just couldn't resist getting out there and capturing some RGB.

There's still some OK detail in this one, some wisps of cloud and surface detail like Mare Cimmerium and what I think is Thoth and Aetheria, but it's a bit soft due to the conditions.

I also need to work on lining up my colour channels a little better.:) The green channel is a little obvious around the NPH and at the limb to the left of the image.

But overall, I'm quite happy with it for early days. I think the colour is quite nice. Much better than anything I ever achieved with my ToUcam.

Thanks for looking.

[Alchemy]

Color has a nice ring to it, youve moved up to the next level:thumbsup:,

quick question.... going from b/w to color how much did the shutter speed drop by ?...... i just bought the filter wheel last week, and some color filters are on the list... oh and what brand/ variety filters did you get?

[iceman]

Good work Matt, that is a nice colour. You could also boost the saturation in photoshop to give it a bit more life.

Well done!

[Dennis]

That’s a very nice Mars and a very tidy job for your 1st RGB image Matt. You almost make it look to easy! Good on you for finding the gaps in the clouds last night, a mighty fine effort!

Cheers

Dennis

[matt]

Thanks guys. Your comments and suggestions are most welcome.



WRT to shutter speed - I was still able to capture at 30fps and 1/30 sec for red and green, but had to drop back to 1/15 for blue to get the histogram past halfway.

I'm using the Astronomik Type 2 LRGB set. They are very poplular for planetary imaging:)



Mike. I had a bit of a struggle with saturation. On this image, I found the more I pushed the saturation the more I 'burnt out' detail in the final image.

I need to experiment a lot more with PS processing and doing things like creating saturation layers etc.

I think that's a better option than trying to crank the saturation of the final image.

Cheers.

[edwardsdj]

Hi Matt,

Another awesome image! Glad to see you got your filter wheel :)

It's amazing you are able to get such images given the conditions in Brisbane.

Have fun,
Doug

[matt]

Thanks, dj.

I've just arrived at work and had a quick look on the LCD screen here, and it looks nothing like it does on my laptop screen at home:(

It also looks different again on my girlfriend's laptop:shrug:

I guess we can only process to our own machine's settings, which I calibrated quite recently.

[edwardsdj]

It is a shame the colour reproduction of LCD is so poor :(

I use three identical monitors on my computer; one is in landscape mode and the other two are portrait. The colour reproduction on the two oriented vertically is hopeless compared to the one oriented horizontally. Must be viewing angle issues.

The pixels are so sharp on LCD though.

[rumples riot]

Matt, good start to RGB.

In Astra Image I adjusted the image by -1 in both Red and Blue channels and this corrected the problem. For your colour you could go .98 of red and 1.2 of green in the recombine feature. This is the same place where you do the channel adjustment. Very easy feature for this sort of thing.

Just a suggestion.

[matt]

Ahhhh.....Yes! :doh: AstraImage.

Completely forgot about that. Haven't used it in ages.

Thanks for the suggestions, Paul. Much appreciated.:)

[Ric]

A very nice rendition Matt, well done.

Mars has sat just just below the ridge of my roof all season so I haven't even observed it visually let alone image it. Maybe next time around.

Cheers

[Matty P]

Nice first RGB image Matt. Very well done.

What colour filters are you using?

[matt]

R...ed....G..reen.....B...lue!!!;)

[Matty P]

:lol: Duh......

Are you using Astronomik filters?

[matt]

:lol: Yes, mate.

Astronomik Type 2.

http://www.optcorp.com/product.aspx?pid=319-327-1157-860-6969