Mar's last Hurrah? 20-12-05 Good Seeing

[Robert_T]

Hi All, had a good run of seeing last night, clear skies and dry, so setup both the Mewlon 180 and the C9.25 for some comparatiive mars imaging. Seeing was 8 out of 10 with moments even better, and I was quite pleased with my results - expect for me that these will be the last Hurrah for Mars this opposition :)

I've attached here an image from the Mewlon 180 and the C9.25 respectively taken around 30min apart, 2000 frames each (much the same settings etc) and stacking a little over 1000 frames in each case. I tried to keep processing similar using Astra Image LR deconvolution on each.

It seems to me that the Mewlon 180 image at left shows a bit more fine detail than that taken through the C9.25 at right, but this might be an unfair comparison. I was using the electric focusser on the Mewlon and hand focussing on the C9.25 - I think the "softness" in the C9.25 image is due to less than perfect focus. Collimation star tests at high (600x) power showed both scopes in good collimation-nick. I also found the image through the C9.25 visually to be better than the mewlon so that further suggests I didn't quite jag the focus for the image here.

Anyway, enjoy!

[rumples riot]

Nice images Robert, I like the Mewlon best.

[Dennis]

Hello, Robert

Those are wonderful images given the meagre size of Mars at the moment. I poked the 'scope at Mars last night too, but gave up as all I could manage was a shimmering orange blob - must sort out my K3CCD settings.

Did you try for Saturn later in the morning?

Cheers

Dennis

[Robert_T]

Hi Dennis, yeh I was pretty pleased given the size of Mars now. The seeing here at least was good. Just came in from another Mars session this evening and the seeing has been kind again! he weather's been cr*p for so long I can't get used to this...:)

Didn't image Saturn this morning, but did yesterday - haven't caught up with all my processing, it'll have to wait till the cloud or crummy seeing returns;)

[iceman]

Nice work Robert, they're very similar images between the 2 scopes.

[davidpretorius]

you are right about the detail, very nice!

[asimov]

That's very nice mate. Both images I like!