Getting ready for Mars

[matt]

OK

Been out practicing the afocal skills on the moon through the 6mm Vixen LV, ready for some Mars shots in an hour or 2.

Never captured Mars before, so am pretty excited.

Here's a quick snap and process of Clavius from downtown Canberra

Am a newbie with Photoshop. Hope I've not overdone the contrast elements and the unsharp mask.

Mike. I followed your earlier instructions, but didn't know what the aim of the high pass procedure is?????

[bird (Anthony Wesley)]

Hi Matt, I'm also set up for a go at mars tonight, just gotta wait until the temperature stops dropping... it's down to 8 degrees at the moment, probablyt got a couple more to drop yet before it levels off at my place.

Bird

[matt]

Go the Canberra boys!!!!

Good to see that breeze disappear shortly after sunset

[iceman (Mike)]

I'm waiting for Mars too!

Seeing doesn't look the best, but who knows..

That's a great shot Matt.

[matt]

Well ... seeing how I'm in such a productive mood..

Here's one where I created 2 duplicate layers in PS ... each with different high pass settings: one upper end, the other lower.

Not much else done.

This one's for you, Mikey boy!!!!

[iceman (Mike)]

I'm waiting for Mars too!

Seeing doesn't look the best, but who knows..

Well i've been and i'm back..
Seeing started out great, thought I was going to have a good night.. but I didn't get started quickly..
Misaligned platform, dust on the ToUcam, I only captured 5 avi's before the seeing turned to jelly
Ah well the ones i'm processing look ok.

Very nice shot Matt you're getting the hang of it!

[matt]

OK

This was tricky. But we captured an image.

Anyone game to have a go at processing to see what's in here?

Or maybe tell us what we can try in Photoshop?

Mike?

[matt]

I might be kidding myself, but I think this is better.

I'm sure there's polar cap in this one, and blue atmospheric haze at the limb???

Again, any tips for processing?

[iceman (Mike)]

The blue limb looks like misaligned red/blue channels because it's so low for us in Aus. That can be fixed in registax with most images.

However afocal shots of planets, unless the seeing is exceptional, you're better off reducing the size to make a sharper shot.

The one above, try reducing it by 50% and see how it looks.

But you did get the NPH, well done!

[Robert_T]

As Mike mentions the blue fringing can be fixed through colour alignment in Registax - if you're using Registax 3, once you get to the "Wavelet" processing stag there are some tabs on the right hand edge - one called RGB Align. Hit that and push the estimate button and it will try and bring things into better alignment (you can play with this manually too but Registax usually gets it pretty close).

That aside, that's a beautiful Moon shot. I've never tried afocal - must ive it a go someday.

cheers,

[asimov (John)]

Good effort on mars Matt. Youv'e got detail there, that's great! Is that frames out of an AVI stacked or a single image....or even X amount of single images stacked?

[matt]

asi

It's a single image. Taken during questionable seeing.

And I was shooting over my roof!

I had a real struggle getting focus etc because the image on the cybershot's LCD screen was not much more than a pin head, which is what I felt like when I saw images I'd captured!

I've had a bit of a go at aligning and stacking in registax today, but I don't think I can get em any better. Something about trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear???

But I had fun. And I'm a little wiser than I was before.

[asimov (John)]

Yes indeed! I have a hard disk full of sows ears & not many silk purses!

The only answer to the 'pin-head' problem is obviously more image scale. Do you have a barlow? I couldn't barlow with my kodak setup cos' I made the adapters before I thought of that idea. What I do though is unscrew the lens bit off the barlow & screw it to my 5mm LV instead. This gives you approx. an extra 1.5X. For focus I found a fairly strong magnifying glass to look at the camera screen with.

[matt]

Will give that a try tonight asi

I'm also going to take the Neximage ccd for a spin as well.

By the way ... i reduced those images a little in size, to increase surface detail definition.

It's a juggling act, my friend!

Here's one more

[asimov (John)]

Does your camera take AVIs as well? If it does, give that a whirl! Good luck with the neximage too.

[asimov (John)]

I'll upload my VERY 1st mars image with the kodak here just for a laugh....BRB

[asimov (John)]

Ain't she a beauty????

[matt]

Maaaaaaaaate!

That's a fantastic thing to share

Again, you've made me feel better, asi