Mars from Brisbane tonight

[firstlight (Tony)]

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.



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

Cheers
Tony

[Clayton]

Good result from the 4"

[RobF (Rob)]

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 (Frank)]

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 (Jeanette)]

Excellent Tony!!

[firstlight (Tony)]

Thanks Clayton and Frank.

Originally Posted by 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.

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.

Originally Posted by 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.

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 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 (Tony)]

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?