Mars from Brisbane tonight

[firstlight]

Hi all,

I finally got my QHY5 to capture video, and since the clouds parted.. for a while at least, I set up the scope to see if I could capture some Red Planet.

Seeing was pretty atrocious, and I am only using the 4" vixen, with 4x powermate, QHY5, 5 fps, stacked in Registax 4 and tweeked a little in PS CS2. I don't even know what region I am looking in. Both images were taken minutes apart, no flats or darks... tomorrow maybe.

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All in all I'm happy with the result, comments welcome.

Cheers
Tony

[Clayton]

Good result from the 4"

[RobF]

Nice going Tony!
A lot more of Mars to see there than I've been able to get through these clouds. You must be happy with that.

[telecasterguru]

That's pretty good imaging.

Frank

[Lester]

Nice images Tony. I have found that a 4" refractor can perform very well compared to my 14" SCT in turbulant seeing conditions. But as the conditions improve the resolving ability of the extra aperture takes over.

[jjjnettie]

Excellent Tony!!

[firstlight]

Thanks Clayton and Frank.



The weather has been crook alright, but it had been getting a bit dry lately. I had only just got the QHY5 to capture images two nights ago and the sky was sort of clear last night so I made the efort to drag out all the gear. The camera performed well as did the mount (I've had the NEQ6 out for a grand total of 3 times since I bought it at the beginning od December.



The 4" is not apo or ED or anything but I really want to use it as my Lunar and Solar scope, but since IU was given the QHY5, I want to try and do planetary with it too... but I REALLY want aperture, I also really want a dedicated CCD camera (sigh)... I must be happy with what I have :).

I was looking at the image a bit today... didn't have much time after capture, processing, sleep then work :sadeyes: to do that. I was trying to work out what region I was imaging and I think the brighter feature near the center if the disk is Elysium Mons, and Olympus Mons is on the leading limb.

Actually I'm pretty stoked... NEED MORE GLASS!!!

[firstlight]

Here is a repro and another capture from Wednesday night. I have to work on the colour when I capture. I changed the settings over the session as I thought that it was too red... and it was. However after processing I think the colour of the first image is more natural.

What do you think?

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