My daughter woke me up at 4am this morning with fits of coughing, so instead of going back to bed I braved the cold and went outside to image Mars.
Took me 1/2 hour before I was ready to capture the first avi.. kinda annoying, need to cut that down a bit. Maybe I can align the platform the night before and throw a tarp over it. Had to carry everything to the imaging location, set up and align the platform, align the finder for the ToUcam, find the planet in the FOV, focus, then I was ready to go. Then the AA batteries went dead on the platform, so I had to go get the 12v! Argh!
Anyway seeing was decent, maybe 6ish out of 10, but unfortunately I underexposed the capture and as a result, the processing brought out the dredded bright limb which is so common on Mars images this season.
The result is ok, not entirely happy with it but Mars is definitely getting bigger. I need more image scale though, I need to get a 4x barlow.
Nice work Mike , so whats the tactic used to avoid the "bright limb", its a tight rope youve got some good detail on that top image so maybe going with more exposure you might affect the whole area instead of the edge
You're right Stuart, it's a tough one. From other threads I've seen on other forums around the place, checking what settings other people use, it's just a matter of trial and error with gamma and gain.
I had both gamma and gain set to 0, in the top image, and gamma at 0 and gain at around 15% in the bottom image.
I tried to get a pic of Mars at 1:30am but it was dancing in the fog!
When I got up at 5:45am to do the ABC Radio program I noticed how excellent Orion looked so I decided as soon as I am finished on the radio at 6:30 I would try for a shot of Orion Neb.
Wouldn't you know it! 6:30 - Daylight and Orion was gone!!
Nice stuff Mike, good, nice and clean image. There are some great images coming out of CN at the moment and your leading the charge out of here. Got up yesterday morning and found that while the sky was clear, it was blowing a gale. Winter this year has had lots of cloud and wind. I am hoping that in a week or so I will be able to get an early morning with Mars. So Keep those images coming, because I can't get any at all.
if you bump theimage scale up wont you lose detail tho?
Not if the seeing is good, you'll get more detail because the features will be better resolved. But at higher magnification, you need better seeing to really take advantage of it.
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wonder what happens if you stack a 2x on topof a 3x? do you get 6x or 5x?
Apparently you'll get 6x. I have stacked my 2x and 2.4x, and have been told that's the equivalent to 4.8x. But as I said, the seeing needs to be much better than it typically is.
Not if the seeing is good, you'll get more detail because the features will be better resolved. But at higher magnification, you need better seeing to really take advantage of it.
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well i knew that, smarty wombat bum
hey how do you find out where the jetstream is mike?
search is evil!!! 
