Mars from a bit over a week ago

[iceman]

Just went back to reprocess an older Mars from the 03/11/2005 because I think my processing technique has improved slightly since then.

It's come out much sharper this time, and I'm happier with the colour.

It's of a different face than the last few too, which is nice to see :)

Comments welcome.

[bird]

Nice image Mike! You've certainly improved a lot over the last few months. Should be good fun at Lostock...

Bird

[ving]

OMG! thats great mike! :)

[robin]

Looking good Mike. Ive taken quiet a lot of mars images that Im reasonably happy with but still not getting the detail like you.

[davidpretorius]

Good one Mike,

I still get a bit confused with the blue tinge at the bottom, is it polar or blue bleeding?

[iceman]

Thanks guys.

Bird, I've been looking at Saturn each morning and it's tempting me to get up early to have a shot at it.. unfortunately it's no higher than Mars so more atmospheric dispertion to deal with :( Can't wait for opposition at Lostock though!

Dave, It's the NPH (Northern Polar Hood). It's clouds over the north pole, they'll form into an ice cap as that hemisphere goes into winter.

[davidpretorius]

nice weather here, so i am going to give it a crack with and without raw mod.



thanks for info

[bird]

It's going to take another couple of weeks for it to get high enough for me to have a go at, but come end of this month it will be open season on Saturn :-)

Bird

[Robert_T]

nice one Mike - what are you doing differently in the processing?

cheers,

[asimov]

Would that be your best image of mars to date Mike?? Very very nice in any case!!

[RB]

Excellent Mike,

You squeezed more detail out, fantastic.
It almost looks like thunder storm clouds.
And check out the blue hood :cool:, you can see through to the detail below. Wow.

Well done you.

[iceman]

Thanks for the comments.

Robert, I'm following most of the same steps but i'm getting a better understanding of how to tweak the most out of each of them without overprocessing, and i'm getting much better at adjusting the colour balance so I don't end up with a yellow Mars, like I did a month or so ago.

My usual processing run is:

1) (Optional step) - Using virtual dub, save the avi as individual bmp frames, and then use ppmcentre to centre the planet in each frame (and reduce the frame size to 400x400 while i'm at it). This makes it easier for registax to align the frames, makes it easier to do a 2-stage alignment run in registax, and the reduced frame size makes the whole processing in registax quicker.

2) Load the bmp stack (or avi) in registax, find a fairly sharp frame (without being too pedantic) and align. I use the "Gradient" estimator, and I don't pay any attention to what the % is set to.

3) If the align curve doesn't follow the right pattern (heading up at the far end), then I scroll the slider all the way to the left to pick the sharpest frame registax found, and then click on the centre of the planet and click align again. This usually gets the shape of the curve I want.

4) I then just drag the slider left or right to reject the poor quality frames that look blurry or that I know won't add anything to the stack. That's why I ignore the % value cause I adjust how many frames I "Limit" by manually.

5) In the optimise tab, I "create reference frame", and do a slight wavelet adjustment (only layer 3 -> 5.8).

6) Optimise, usually takes 3 passes.

7) Stack tab - press "Stackgraph" and slider the vertical slider down until I think enough frames are being stacked. How many frames I stack, is a choice I make each time depending on a) How good each frame is, b) How many frames in total I have to choose from.
If the seeing was really good, and I rejected a lot of bad frames already during the "Limit" phase, then I might stack 75% of the frames that are left, by dragging the slider down and cutting off the peaks. If I had 1000 frames, I might stack 700.
If the seeing was only average or bad, I'll reject even more frames by dragging the slider lower and only stacking a few hundred, sometimes even less.
Obviously if you had gain high or transparency was bad, the image can be quite grainy if you don't stack enough frames, but i'd rather stack fewer good frames, than more bad ones which will blur the features.

8) Go to wavelets, click "RGB Align" and hit "Estimate".

9) Adjust wavelets, I usually go from Layer 6 down to Layer 3, with Layer 6 being the highest (depending on image quality/seeing), sometimes around 50-60, then less for Layer 5 etc, until layer 3 .

10) Save as TIFF

11) Bring the image into AstraImage.

12) Split into RGB planes

13) Then do a LR or ME deconvolution on each colour, usually a value of 3/1.3 depending on the quality of the image and how many frames I stacked. If I didn't stack many frames (because of bad seeing), then it won't stand up for much deconvolution without getting hard rings around the edge.

14) Recombine the RGB planes, sometimes adjusting the colour weight to give a better look. Screenshot the result and save as TIFF.

15) Take the image into NeatImage and do some noise reduction/sharpening. Sometimes this step doesn't help, it depends on how many frames I stacked and the quality of the image. Just have a play.

16) Take the image back to Photoshop, do an unsharp mask (if needed), and adjust the colour balance, contrast, add text etc.

And that's it!

HTH's someone.

[Hitchhiker]

Thanks for revealing all your secrets Mike!

It's really helpful to see how someone who knows what they are doing does it step by step. It's all starting to make a little more sense now!

[RB]

Thank you Mr Iceman for your processing directions.
I didn't know there was more than one way to skin a cat. :lol: :lol:

I'll have to try it out.

Thanks again dude.
:)

[bird]

Hey Mike, funnily enough that's almost identical to how I process these things...only difference nowadays is that I start with three sequences for red,green and blue and so I have to do it all 3 times :P

Bird