Nice in so-so conditions Paul, I can vouch for the seeing, i was looking at Mars from about one till two something - wasnt great- and its so teeny weeny . So far I prefer the last two great oppositions of the triology (2001 {for the dramatic spc and southern favouring dec, and then the dust storms},2003 - for obvious reasons) to this one.
Kearn
Thanks guys for the response, don't you guys go to work at all? Thanks all the same.
Louie I was imaging through my Lx200 10" as per usual.
Matt go with the 9.25 better for planetary imaging. Sorry I also meant to write AVI's. An AVI is an encoded movie taken of the planet through a webcam, in this case the Toucam Pro that I have.
Gary, this was the first clear skies that I have had for nearly a month. So I share your pain and if it is any concillation today has once again clouded up.
David, by all means use my settings, just bear in mind that I am using the Baader UV- IR cut filter and this may change the settings slightly. My settings should give you a rough guide on where to start. If you look at my Jupiter settings they are different again. You will get a feel of what is best for your equipment once you process a couple of hundred AVI's. LOL
Mike that image is with a Powermate, a 2.5x, sorry forgot to mention that too. Yes I am hopeing for some good seeing in the next couple of weeks, but with the season going for longer than it should it is anyones guess how the seeing will be at opposition. I think the tweek on the collimation made a bit of a difference too. Still I won't know until the really good seeing happens. Thanks.
Kearn, the seeing was very so-so last night but better than it has been for quite some time. Mars has really grown in size and now is more impressive.
Here is another one from the same session. I think this one is better, slightly sharper and same seeing.
mate, i have seem your wonderful gallery of photo's, the stigmas connected to the term "art" seems to degrade from what is a great gallery and very pleasing to my eye & senses, so to get to the point, your processing skills are very very good for terestrial and astro!.
any chance for the likes of ken and I of a real quick summary on your processing for these mars pics.
i notice you mention colour mod, are we talking the toucam raw colour mod, or normal toucam but with the long exposure mod.
any special tips on wavelets and / or deconvolution?
I have been trying Ice's tips and they are working well, so would be keen to give yours a rip.
I have been taking video of mars at say 1/500 or 1/1000 and raising the gain to 10 - 20% to compensate. I note your comments re a filter and obviously will reflect a change in my settings for a non filter.
are you making the trek to star camp. cmon i know you want to!!!
Everything depends upon your scope, so I will work on the basis that you have something close to my f10. If you have a faster scope then the image will appear brighter with my settings.
So when I capture I try to make the image just above dull, that is how it will look finished. This does take some practice but a sure fire way of know is to process the first AVI in Registax3 and then look at the histogram. All three colours should coincide at the same point and be near the right. This means that you have exposed at the correct exposure. I would think that 1/500 or 1/1000 will be too low an exposure. However, if you have an extremely fast scope f4 or f5 then this might be correct. Personally, I usually expose at 1/33 of a second. I use 10fps on bad nights and 5fps on very good nights. All this depends on gauging the conditions of the night which comes with experience. So aim for a reasonably bright image, but not too bright and not too dull.
Now take your AVI and run it for 2 minutes. BTW setting will change from a powermate 2x to a 5x. The 5x will present a less bright image than a 2x and you will need to raise your exposure to compensate. Try not to have your gain too high. High gain leads to grainy images and the grain monster coming out.
Once you have taken your AVI, load it into Registax3. Now select the smallest alignment box possible that will fit over your entire planet. In this case I use the 256 check box. Now go to quality estimate box and choose the "gradient" method. Then I like to select something around 85%-90% with lowest quality. Now go to align and select automatic just before doing this. Next once the image is processed to the wavelet tab I immediately select RGB shift and let it do the adjustment automatically.
Now for wavelets. Most people process from 1 down to 6. I prefer to go the other way. I start with 6 and go somewhere around 40-75 depending on the image. Next I go to 5 and make an adjustment which is at least 5 below what 6 was. Again this depends what the image looks like, I always go until the image just starts to degrade, then back it off a little way. Experience will tell you when it is right. So then go to 4 and once again adjust but make sure it is less than 5. Proceed to travel all the way up and make sure each is less than the previous one. Look at the image carefully and ensure the adjustments enhance the image not degrade it. Experiment a little and it will come.
Now once this is done you may if the image is dull, go to the histogram and do an image stretch. If you exposed the image correctly to begin with then this will not be necessary.
Once this is completed save the image under the final tab. Things to experiment with are resampling to increase image scale. If you have used the correct powermate then this will be not necessary. However do experiment, this is your work and artistic license.
Now that we are here with a saved image load the image into Astraimage and go directly to process and split the image into the RGB panes. Under the restoration tab select Lucy Richardson and click on it. Now each planet has different settings that work, and this will depend on your scopes film speed and how bright the image is and what the seeing was like on the night. That said though I have found that with Mars something around 1.3 pixels and 3-5 interations works well. Do this for each image. You will notice that blue is always blurry and will need special care not to make it too grainy. If you do get blue exposed correctly as well as the other panes, write the settings down for later imaging runs. Once you have done all three panes then recombine under the process tab and do a 0.8 gamma correction to the image and if you like a median filter adjustment under the filter tab.
Finally go into PS and do any other image croping and type work that you want.
Now for your other questions.
I use a Toucam with the raw colour mod for a smooth image and this allows me to do the sharpening myself and helps reduce noise. It is however, harder to gain focus and this will take some practice (not that I think I have it mastered yet).
I do use a filter and say that this is almost a must for Mars and works really well on the gas giants. I use the baader IR-UV cut filter. It stops Infra Red from bleeding panes and ruining your image. You should get one of these filters as soon as you can. Worth the money and it is how Anthony (Bird) Mike and myself get the images we get. I think we each use different filters from each other, but the end result is similar (although not as good as Anthony's stunning images)
Unfortunately, I cant make it to the camp, and would dearly love to meet both you and Ken and do hope that you have a great time.
Now I hope that this has helped and do let me know if you have any specific questions or if you think I might have left something out.
. So far I prefer the last two great oppositions of the triology (2001 {for the dramatic spc and southern favouring dec, and then the dust storms},2003 - for obvious reasons) to this one.
