Don C
member
Reged: 08/26/07
Posts: 46
Loc: McCain, North Carolina
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Taken at f/30, decent seeing, 0530 EST (1030 UTC) on 3 Nov 2009. Just a quick run through ninox to crop, center, and grade, then registered and stacked in Registax5, resampled in PS CS4 to 200%, back to Registax for wavelets, then CS4 again to tweak the color and apply Gaussian blur and unsharp mask.
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CPC 800 XLT OTA
Orion Atlas EQ
Orion 3-element 2x Barlow w/extension tube
Philips SPC900NC with Color RAW mod
Dell Studio XPS 1640 running Win7 Home Premium
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Don C
member
Reged: 08/26/07
Posts: 46
Loc: McCain, North Carolina
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And another, a little sharper.
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CPC 800 XLT OTA
Orion Atlas EQ
Orion 3-element 2x Barlow w/extension tube
Philips SPC900NC with Color RAW mod
Dell Studio XPS 1640 running Win7 Home Premium
Edited by Don C (11/03/09 06:00 PM)
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Mike Phillips
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 02/21/06
Posts: 1443
Loc: Swift Creek, NC - 35.682 N, 78...
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VERY NICE, Congrats Don!
Mike P
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Gallery/Blog/RSS/Tutorials
Mike's Lesson on Seeing, Collimation and Focusing
**NEW** VIDEO HowTo: Planetary Processing Routine v8 **NEW**
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KyleEdwards
member
Reged: 09/04/07
Posts: 61
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Those are both very good. You captured the polar cap especially well.
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Kyle Edwards
Solar System Imaging Simulator
My Astrophotography Gallery
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antimorris
sage
Reged: 08/16/09
Posts: 241
Loc: San Antonio-ish, TX
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What was your setup/details on the image?
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Anna
CPC 800 XLT w/FeatherTouch micro-focuser
Orion EON 80ED
unmodded Nikon D40
Meade DSI II Pro with ATIK Filter Wheel & Outback Razorback Cooler
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Morris Astronomy
My Astro Blog
"sic itur ad astra"
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Don C
member
Reged: 08/26/07
Posts: 46
Loc: McCain, North Carolina
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Thanks guys. Since this is my first imaging season I still need to work out the camera settings, start working toward that CGEM 925 ( it took me about 45 minutes to get Mars on chip), and finish up the observatory. The second image was taken just at sunrise (0615 EDT) and is at the original image scale. The first image was from the 2nd run earlier, and is bicubic resampled at 200% in Photoshop.
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CPC 800 XLT OTA
Orion Atlas EQ
Orion 3-element 2x Barlow w/extension tube
Philips SPC900NC with Color RAW mod
Dell Studio XPS 1640 running Win7 Home Premium
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Don C
member
Reged: 08/26/07
Posts: 46
Loc: McCain, North Carolina
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Anna, I use the latest version of K3CCD Tools for capture- with the 2x Barlow and extension tube I get f/30, and ran 15 and 20 fps at the slowest shutter setting (slider all the way to the left). I had the gain set between half way and 3/4 on the slider, keeping the histogram reading between 220 and 240. Time limit on the AVI was set to 2.5 minutes, left over from the Jupiter sessions. Gamma was set to a little over half way on the slider.
Processing: I am new to this, so take with a grain of salt. I start by running the .avi file trough VirtualDub, outputting 640x480 .bmps of the frames. Then I run the windows gui version of Ninox (I copied the current version of the program into the win version folder and renamed the .exe files to work with the gui) to crop all images to 400x400, center and quality sort the frames. Then I run those through Rexistax 5 to stack and run very mild wavelets and the RGB Align function, and save as a 16-bit .tiff file. Then off to Photoshop CS4 for resampling to 200%, Gaussian filtering, then levels and color adjustments, then unsharp mask filtering. Save again as a copy, and back to Registax for final wavelets. Finally back to PS CS4 to run a last round of filters, and finally I resample to 600x600 px and crop. Then I save as .tif, .bmp, and .jpg for printing and web display.
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CPC 800 XLT OTA
Orion Atlas EQ
Orion 3-element 2x Barlow w/extension tube
Philips SPC900NC with Color RAW mod
Dell Studio XPS 1640 running Win7 Home Premium
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whduke
professor emeritus
Reged: 04/22/08
Posts: 645
Loc: Clayton NC
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Very good shot Don!
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CELESTRON 9.25
Mount EQ-CG5
DMK21AU04
Astronomik LRGB
Orion Filter Wheel
Neximage Camera
Powermate 2.5x
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sfugardi
sage
Reged: 09/30/06
Posts: 321
Loc: CT
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Don, excellent images especially for the first time. You should do well with your setup as Mars approaches opposition. Thanks for posting them
Regards,
Steve
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1986 Compustar C11
Toucam, DMK21 + IFW Wheel
ST-4/C90, Nikon D70s
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antimorris
sage
Reged: 08/16/09
Posts: 241
Loc: San Antonio-ish, TX
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Don - I have a CPC 800 as well - although I am on an alt-az mount still. I have a DSI II Pro, do you think I can get ok shots of Mars with that? I havent tried yet am a little nervous about trying :-)
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Anna
CPC 800 XLT w/FeatherTouch micro-focuser
Orion EON 80ED
unmodded Nikon D40
Meade DSI II Pro with ATIK Filter Wheel & Outback Razorback Cooler
---------------
Morris Astronomy
My Astro Blog
"sic itur ad astra"
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Don C
member
Reged: 08/26/07
Posts: 46
Loc: McCain, North Carolina
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Anna, I'm using the Philips webcam because it has the Sony ccd in it that has all the elements for great planetary work- I would use my DSI Pro but it never holds connection stably enough (B&W version of the same chip). The DSI II should work, you will have a lot of empty black space around the planet but you can crop out most of that. You have better seeing there and will get a better ratio of clear frames, maybe a trip to Enchanted Rock out by Fredericksburg for some elevation- I'm jealous! Use barlow/powermates to increase focal length/image scale. I don't know whether you can get fast enough frame rates with the DSI, but the Celestron NexImage is the same ccd as the Philips and is cheap for a dedicated planetary camera...
(edit) you will have problems with clearing the mount if you put the barlow in, why I went to the GEM. Mars is really high in altitude so I would worry about clearances with the fork mount near zenith...
Don
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CPC 800 XLT OTA
Orion Atlas EQ
Orion 3-element 2x Barlow w/extension tube
Philips SPC900NC with Color RAW mod
Dell Studio XPS 1640 running Win7 Home Premium
Edited by Don C (11/04/09 04:06 AM)
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Don C
member
Reged: 08/26/07
Posts: 46
Loc: McCain, North Carolina
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Steve, whduke, thanks. I really want to go monochrome with filters but that is last on the list- mount first (mine has issues) then the C 9.25 OTA and focuser...I'm just excited that for the first time in weeks we have a slowdown in the jetstream...
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CPC 800 XLT OTA
Orion Atlas EQ
Orion 3-element 2x Barlow w/extension tube
Philips SPC900NC with Color RAW mod
Dell Studio XPS 1640 running Win7 Home Premium
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Don C
member
Reged: 08/26/07
Posts: 46
Loc: McCain, North Carolina
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And L+RGB, L is the Meade red filter+IR/UV cut filter.
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CPC 800 XLT OTA
Orion Atlas EQ
Orion 3-element 2x Barlow w/extension tube
Philips SPC900NC with Color RAW mod
Dell Studio XPS 1640 running Win7 Home Premium
Edited by Don C (11/04/09 05:52 AM)
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