Thursdays Mars

[Maurice]

Hello all,

John Kazanas & I got together on Thursday morning for a camera comparison on imaging Mars.

We'll post some results soon, but in the mean time I've attached an R image and a R(G)B image from the ASI 120mm camera.

We used John's 12.5" f/5 Newt with barlows to give similar image scales on both cameras - mine was at f/25 or so. (John uses a Luminera Skynyx)

Seeing wasn't great, but I think that the result was quite acceptable for an 8.1" Mars.

A big 'thank you' to John for his hospitality - hopefully we will repeat the same comparison from my place using Mark Samson's C14 soon.

cheers
Maurice Valimberti

[Sebbie (Sebastian)]

Hi Maurice, hat's a very fine looking Mars, I'm very tempted by these ASI cameras!

Did you use the filter wheel from ZWO Optical? What was the exposure time and frame rate for each capture?

Rgds, Seb

[Maurice]

Hi Sebastian
The filter wheel was not a ZWO optical one. Not sure which brand John has, but it was motorized & worked well. Pretty sure he has Astronomik filters in it.
Exposure for each frame was 20ms & we were capturing at close to 50FPS (sub-frames, not the full frame) for 200sec per colour through Firecapture.
I'm happy with the camera so far - we'll see how it performs over time...
Cheers
Maurice

[John K]

The filter wheel is a SupaSlim true Technology and the filters Astronomics Type 2.

Early indications are that the Skynix has slightly less noise but lower FPS vs the ZWO - so possibly you will get more frames with the ZWO and in variable seeing could work better but it was hard on this session to do a full comparison as the seeing was worse when we used the Skynix and we got a good window when shooting the ZWO camera before it turned bad again. But if higher FPS what is needed then the ZWO looks good, but for lower noise perhaps the Skynix is better so maybe this is better for solar stuff. Always a compromise I guess! and more comparisons to come in the coming weeks as I intend to also get a ZWO to try out.