[Mickoid (Michael)]

Thanks for your compliments guys. I was pretty pleased with the results given the fair seeing conditions. As you said, especially with Mars. I have done better on Saturn with better seeing but as this was my first experience in shooting Mars, I had nothing to compare to. However, going by what I've seen of Mars in the Images section, I'm not far off the mark with what they're getting with equipment 5X the price of mine.

It was my intention to show what you can do with basic eyepieces/barlows that come with an intermediate scope when you buy one. A decent DSLR and Registax, are also imperative for planetary work but you can pick up good used ones for under $300. Pipp is another free download that's great for stabilising and converting the camera's video .mov to .avi for Registax.

However, as with any astrophotography, a stable, transparent astmosphere plays a huge role in obtaining sharp clear results.