Mars 31st Dec 2013 (UTC)

[Sebbie (Sebastian)]

Hello again, first of all Happy New Year to everyone!

Had the SCT set up outside for the past few days in hope of clear skies and possibility to image Mars in early 2014. It got cloudy around midnight (just in time for fireworks and celebrations) and I thought the pattern will continue until the late morning (as was the case all week long, you got to love holiday weather ). To my surprise the weather cleared up around 4am so I dusted myself off and rushed outside.

Seeing was excellent (9/10) for the first hour after which high level cloud (remnants of cyclone Christine) started to arrive. Here's a result of very first capture (which proved to be the best) - took eleven 3 minute avis at f40. Used 1.5 drizzling in AS!2 for the first time coupled with waveletes / deconvolution / DNR in AI. Bright arc portion of the edge 'rind' artefact cloned out in PS, final image scaled up to 115%.

It's evening time at Olympus Mons and the Tharsis Region. Also Solis Lacus (the 'Eye of Mars') is in view. Can't wait for April!

Thanks for looking,

- Seb

[Stefan Buda]

Hi Seb,

Very good resolution but the polar cap should be white. The PC can be used as reference for getting the colours right which is quite difficult with Mars when the PC is very small or not visible.

Happy New Year to everyone!

[EricB (Eric)]

Good job Sebbie! The first Mars of the year and wishing you plenty more!

The yellow colour seems odd to me too.

Cheers,

Eric

[Troy]

Hi seb, a good image.

Hope you don't mind but I tweak with your image to change the colour. I stripped your image into red, green and blue images and then combine them in Astra Image. I change the intensity of the red channel to 0.93 and green to 1.05.

Hope this helps

Troy

[Sebbie (Sebastian)]

Hi guys, thanks a lot for feedback.. just shows what a noob I am at this art .. Here's another version of the colour corrected image that's both pleasing to the eye and not too blue on the albedo features (processed in ACDSee).

I suspect yellow hue might be due to high level cloud that I was imaging through.. or perhaps too many glass elements in the imaging train (two barlows stacked together)? I tried white balancing prior to commencing recording in IC Capture which gave me following settings - do they look ok to you?

hue 180 sat 128
white bal red 0 blue 89
bright 20 gain 1016
exp 1/60 sec aref 128
gamma 100

Thanks,
Seb