Mars, September 22 2005

[bird]

Finally, after travelling for work the last couple of weeks I'm back home and the weather has started to clear up... I've been hanging out to have a go at Mars so I stayed up late last night.

Conditions ended up as very poor, high haze and a bright nearby moon - only about a dozen stars were visible across the whole sky. Mars was at about 45 degrees altitude and the moon was even lower at about 30 degrees (only just clearing the trees!).

The seeing was reasonably stable but the haze robbed me of a lot of light so I had to use longer exposures.

Overall I'd rate the imaging conditions as 2 - 2.5 / 10. Not good, but I had a go anyway.

The result was not so bad, there's some cloud formations visible near the centre of the disc, the NPH can be seen, the SPC is visible.

The low quality of the raw frames meant I had to process it really hard, apologies to the purists :-)

Details:

10" f/6 newtonian
5x powermate + extender for effective 6x
PGR Dragonfly Express camera, 640x480 16bpp monochrome
Astronomik R,G,B filters
R=G=33ms B=66ms
Captured with Coriander for Linux, processed in Registax, Astra Image
and the GIMP for Windows.

regards, Bird

Edit: Mike Sirois enhanced my images a bit further in Neat Image, so I've replaced
my original image with a new one that includes his enhancements.

[RB]

Spectacular shots there bird......

:thumbsup:

RB

[h0ughy]

you can see the polar caps are shrinking

[iceman]

Beautiful shot Anthony, if that's 2/10 conditions I can't wait until you get some good conditions!

You've got Olympus Mons there too, excellent work!

How are you finding the new camera now after you've had a chance to play a bit more with it?

[bird]

G'Day Mike. I love the new camera. It makes marginal 2/10 conditions into 6/10 or 7/10 - there's just no way I could have got this image with my old camera.

Mars will not be good for us Aussies this time around, so I don't have any great expectations to match the guys in the northern hemisphere when they have mars at the zenith and we have it low in the north.

My hopes are mainly on Jupiter and Saturn, and on the Moon. Come February/March next year I hope to be cranking out some really good stuff. I'm using Mars as target practice for the new camera and (in a few weeks) for the new scope.

regards, Bird

[rumples riot]

Hey Anthony, stunning shot, plenty of detail there and this just makes me more envious of you guys with good weather. Jupiter is almost gone now and I am getting planetary fever. Been only getting shots once a month at the moment and at this rate cannot hope to get enough practice before opposition of Mars.

Which camera did you end up getting? Model etc.

Once again, great to see your images here again. Even for 2/10 seeing this image is stunning. Welcome back.

[bird]

Hi Paul. I read this site every day, so in some ways I never went away :-) I just keep quiet most of the time and enjoy looking at the work you guys are doing.

I bought the Dragonfly Express (otherwise known as the Stupidly Expensive camera) from Point Grey Research (www.ptgrey.com), cost me about $2k all up with shipping and GST.

I know other people who spend 4x that on a deep-sky camera, so I guess I don't feel too bad...

regards, Bird

[bird]

For your visual edification, another Mars from this morning - this one taken at about 3:40am.

Note volcano near terminator, showing a small but visible caldera and shadow.

Oh the wonders of image processing...

[[1ponders]]

That's a damn fine shot you've got there bird. Looks like its a very well spent $2K and that takes nothing away from you processing prowess. :thumbsup:

[davidpretorius]

great stuff, bird. you and ice really encourage me to keep having a go. A few years down the track and a real good 5x barlow and i hope to be getting close to these.

no selling yourself short!!!

[h0ughy]

well you just have to take it all in and listen to the man MIKE :poke: :poke:

[iceman]

Incredible detail and sharpness on the NeatImage processed version, Anthony!

You have to find out what processing Mike Sirios did, and share it! Please! :)

[Lee]

Awesome images.

[atalas]

Greats shots Bird ! gee lucky the seeing was bad ah !

Louie :thumbsup:

[ving]

tottaly brilliant shot! :D

[bird]

For those people (like me!) with different types of monitors, it's hard to get an image that looks good on all of them. e.g. my lcd monitor shows an image to be really crisp but when I compare it on my crt it looks fuzzy.

Anyway, here's the above image processed a bit further, including a monochrome version. If you're on an lcd screen then this might look a bit too far processed but on most crt screens it might look better than the original.

regards, Bird

[bird]

I've become an overnight Neat Image fanatic. The noise reduction and enhancement it can do is just amazing.

Here's what he did:

Device Noise Profile{Tab}:
Auto Profile

Noise Filter Settings{Tab}:
Hit preview first so you can see the real time changes.
Filter preset *default*

Noise filter settings
Noise levels
High -30%
mid -100%
low -100%
Y +0
Cr +25
Cb +25

Noise Reduction Amounts
High 100%
Mid 100%
Low 100%
Y 60%
Cr 100%
Cb 100%

[Check] High Quality
[check] High Resolution

Sharpning Settings
{check} Y
{check} Conservative

High 250%
Mid 250%
Low 250%
These are the values i used

Mike

Clear Skies!
Mike Sirois
Beachside Observatory
www.roverme.com/4727

[RB]

You can't beat that Neat Image :thumbsup:
Awesome app, can't do without it.

Great new image bird,
All your images were stunning on my CRT.

:cool:

Andrew

PS love your binary signiture BTW

[iceman]

Wow anthony that latest one is incredible! What did you do differently with that one? I can't believe the detail!

I hope you're new scope is finished for opposition!

[davidpretorius]

sorry everyone who has imaged mars, but in my short career and 3 months of as&t, this is the best i have seen!

[h0ughy]

sorry, did i hear you say you work at JPL and you have your own private probe!!! Wow, what are you going to achieve in november!!

[LT_Ng]

Bird,

Your recent Mars images are so smooth and excellent, especially for the color.

I would like to hear your comments on comparing ToUcam with your new planetary camera. Is your new camera user friendly with Window XP? It is seemed very expensive?

Thanks.

LT

[bird]

Hi LT.

The new camera is very much better than the ToUCam in many ways, and so it ought to be for the price! - but it's a monochrome camera so you would need extra hardware - a filter wheel and R,G,B filters.

The camera is compatible with Windows, and it comes with a simple application that you
could use for capturing under Windows.

I use the camera under Linux, with an excellent free application called Coriander.

I'd estimate that the Dragonfly Express can give images that are at least 2x the effective resolution of the ToUCam, because it's more sensitive and sends uncompressed 16 bit data. The only downside is that the pixels are larger - 7.4 micron compared to the ToUCam, so that images appear 30% smaller at the same focal length.

For me, that means I now use a 5x powermate instead of a 4x that I was using earlier in the year. With an extension tube I can make the 5x into a 6x or 7x, so the loss of image scale with the DX is not a problem.

There is a positive side to larger pixels - they have more capacity, and this means a larger dynamic range is possible as compared to the 5.6u pixels in the ToUCam.

regards, Bird