[thegableguy (Chris)]

Besides a few single exposures with my 8" Dob (now sold) I've never really tried imaging planets before; figured with Mars getting so cosy it was worth a try, even if my little ED80 isn't really designed for such things.

A little pleasantly surprised by the results. I combined a 2x Barlow with a 5x Barlow (took a LOT of experimentation and disassembling to get that combination working), shot with a crop sensor DSLR for around 90-120 seconds each, adjusting the tracking with the Synscan controller whilst watching the live view. The Barlow combo had a ridicukously heavy vignette so I had to keep each planet right in the very middle.

Converted to AVI with MPEG Streamclip; aligned, stacked & processed the best 500 frames in Registax; final editing in Photoshop.

Processing & editing are kinda brutal - think I went a little overboard on the sharpening with the wavelets - but still surprised at the level of detail such a small aperture can pull out.

Nevertheless I'll be keen for something considerably bigger when Mars comes even closer in 2018...