1083 replies to this topic

[Doug_Hole]

Here is my best image of mars so far, taken from dark skies with decent seeing conditions at 30 degrees of altitude, same setup used as the previous image, I'm quite happy with this result considering I only have a 5.1" inch telescope! I much prefer this side of mars, it shows alot more detail. Also if anyone knows how to get rid of that ringing effect in the top left, I would appreciate some help.

 

Mars

Edited by Doug_Hole, 03 February 2025 - 02:20 AM.

[Doug_Hole]

I played around with the wavlets again, this time I chose not to select linked wavlets, and I think this might have gotten me a better result, as there is less ringing around and on the planet, and the details stand out pretty well. Also I think there is a thin cloud underneath the NPC, can anyone confirm that?

 

Mars linked wavlets (Linear, Gaussian)

 

 

 

 

 

Mars regular wavlets (Linear, Gaussian)

Attached Thumbnails

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Edited by Doug_Hole, 04 February 2025 - 10:08 PM.

[Doug_Hole]

Not quite ready to let the shrinking mars go yet, I'm trying to map as much of the martian surface as possible this opposition. Seeing wasn't great, but mars was just over 30 degrees of altitude so the NPC is alot whiter, I plan on getting an ADC in a while. 

 

[Craigar]

Mars 2025-02-08 07.01utc ES6 485c Svbony 3x barlow

 

average seeing between clouds, about 1 hr of data derotated via WinJuPos

ended up with good contrast, maybe too much - maybe too much wavelets

 

 

6" ES Mak Newt F/4.8 731mm FL
3x Svbony 3 element APO"shorty" barlow
QHYiii 485C 2.9um
iOptron iEq45 mount

Processing: PiPP + AutoStakkert!3 + registax6 +WinJuPos +GIMP

Edited by Craigar, 09 February 2025 - 04:31 AM.

[Alexandrite]

 

Another "best Mars" for me from last night
Seeing wasn't great and Mars was quite wobbly, but the good thing was that I could see Syrtis Major so well, I could focus the scope by it.

[jmviper]

Tonight the Moon has almost touched Mars:

 

Near 18' distance. Celestron 114 mm + Svbony 305 Pro + Focal Reducer 2x.

 

Mars with Mak 127 + Svbony 305 pro + barlow 2x.

 

 

[Craigar]

Tonight the Moon has almost touched Mars:

 

Near 18' distance. Celestron 114 mm + Svbony 305 Pro + Focal Reducer 2x.

 

Mars with Mak 127 + Svbony 305 pro + barlow 2x.

Looking at them "side by side" from where we are, really makes me feel better about what detail were capturing on Mars with these "small bore" scopes cause cause compared to our moon it's really far away.. Very Nice Mars!
 

Edited by Craigar, 09 February 2025 - 04:56 PM.

[Avocette]

Mars on 2025-2-4 18:09 UTC AutoStakkart!4 25% of 10’000 1ms exposures using ASI585MC at gain 440. Wavelet sharpened and colour balanced in Registax 6. SkyMax 150 at f14.5.

 

 

 

 

[Craigar]

Mars on 2025-2-4 18:09 UTC AutoStakkart!4 25% of 10’000 1ms exposures using ASI585MC at gain 440. Wavelet sharpened and colour balanced in Registax 6. SkyMax 150 at f14.5.

 

2025-02-04-1809_4-RGB-Mars_2.jpeg

Really Good! although seems a little over exposed and/or too high gain? I have this happen when I'm trying to shoot through clouds that are moving quick in hopes of getting enough exposure when I have partial clouds - so I set my gain purposefully about 30% higher than normal, then have PiPP reject the overexposed frames (that came through if the sky is totally clear between the many clouds).

 

Once I started using PiPP as my first "pre" processing app, I got better results and smaller good data sets = way quicker for AutoStakkart!4 to process and way less storage space used.

 

Edited by Craigar, 09 February 2025 - 06:18 PM.

[Craigar]

PiPP = Planetary Imaging PreProcessor

 

 

PIPP is a Windows application designed for pre-processing planetary images before stacking them with image stacking software such as Registax.  PIPP's main purpose is to crop each image frame and select only the best quality frames to reduce the memory and processing requirements of the stacking software.

 

PiPP's website is currently off line but it's still downloadable and all the info is still available, here's some links

 

https://web.archive....site/astropipp/

 

https://www.reddit.c...e_to_find_pipp/

 

https://app.astrobin...eprocessor-pipp

 

many op system downloads here, including Win 64 and Win 32

https://astrowhat.co...iPP&o=relevance

Edited by Craigar, 09 February 2025 - 06:25 PM.

[Avocette]

Mars on 2025-2-4 18:09 UTC AutoStakkart!4 25% of 10’000 1ms exposures using ASI585MC at gain 440. Wavelet sharpened and colour balanced in Registax 6. SkyMax 150 at f14.5.

 

2025-02-04-1809_4-RGB-Mars_2.jpeg

Following the comments from @Craigar above, about over-exposure, I looked in detail and found that it was just during the Registax stage that it became overblown. I've returned to the original AutoStakkert output file, and reprocessed it, this time in WaveSharp 2.0. Here's the result....
 

[Avocette]

Here's a further Mars from a day later than the one above using similar processing, and hopefully not over-exposed!:

2025-02-05 21:22

 

[Craigar]

Here's a further Mars from a day later than the one above using similar processing, and hopefully not over-exposed!:

2025-02-05 21:22

 

2025-02-05-2122_6-RGB-Mars_01.jpg

Sweeet! Oh yea how did you get you f ratio to 14.5 ?

 

Thx

Edited by Craigar, 13 February 2025 - 07:49 PM.

[Craigar]

Mars 2025-01-24 0818.57utc

 

 

This one almost got buried cause I was trying to do DSO earlier, clouds came in but there was a sucker hole where I could see Mars..

 

average seeing before clouds shut me down, 6 minutes data about 15% of frames

6" ES Mak Newt F/4.8 731mm FL
3x Svbony 3 element APO"shorty" barlow
QHYiii 485C 2.9um
iOptron iEq45 mount
Processing: PiPP + AutoStakkert!3 + registax6 +WinJuPos +GIMP
00 18 57 Mars ES6 485c Svb3x lapl6 ap37 Drizzle15 RxD 160Crop

[Avocette]

Sweeet! Oh yea how did you get you f ratio to 14.5 ?

 

Thx

The natural focal ratio would seem to be f12.5 (from the plate attached to the scope 1800mm/150mm). But by placing the camera sensor around 170mm behind the scope (refocusing the primary mirror) the measured focal length is 2030mm. Divide this by 140mm which is the practical measured operating aperture of my particular scope, and you get f14.5.

This is what the spacers look like in practice:

 

[Craigar]

That's a nice rig! I might have to use this as a partial excuse to get a 6" Mak-Cass

[Craigar]

.. well in the meantime ..

 

Mars 2025-02-19  0843_8utc

 

from 14  x 6 minute videos with poor collimation and clouds

 

6" ES Mak Newt F/4.8 731mm FL
3x Svbony 3 element APO"shorty" barlow
QHYiii 485C 2.9um
iOptron iEq45 mount
Processing: PiPP + AutoStakkert!3 + registax6 + WinJuPos + a little more registax6

Edited by Craigar, 21 February 2025 - 03:30 PM.

[dev81]

Micro 2" bore challenge. Mars is only 11.5" in diameter!

Sky-Watcher 1201 achromatic refractor was limited to 2" using supplied cap. Was curious wether Syrtis Major and North cup are still visible in such a little aperture.

 

Attached Thumbnails

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Edited by dev81, 23 February 2025 - 05:11 AM.

[Bob Campbell]

Scottsdale 2/22/25 Poor seeing, OK transparency.

 

Mars. This is the more interesting side. Sharpcap livestack save as seen, traditional videos with post-processing (AS!4/wavesharp) turned out horrible. Never really could get a solid focus.

 

C6/asi678mc uv-ir cut. (az-gti(eq) mount)

 

Odd though that the albedo features are considerably different than what stellarium predicted. First I have seen that. I compared with Craigar from Jan 24, 8:18 UT case, and it looks a lot like mine (his better) but his (and others) also does not agree with the Stellarium prediction, both  mobile and web-based.

 

Mars

 

 

Odd too is that mine appears pixel-ated and undersampled, yet the C6 was at f10 and 2 micron pixels. Seems like for the smaller target (Mars vs Jupiter) the 5xpixel size might have to be increased(?). I do not recall seeing this undersampling before, so maybe I'm forgetting something, or maybe sharpcap livestack (Feb 17th version) is doing something different?

 

Edit: Probably I got too ambitious about enlarging the image(?)

 

Bob

Edited by Bob Campbell, 23 February 2025 - 12:06 PM.

[Bob Campbell]

Scottsdale 2/23/25 Good (for scottsdale ) seeing, excellent transparency. 

 

I took these between 02:24-4:09 UT

 

Rarely does the jetstream gets into the blue/green area (Scottsdale slightly to the east of Phoenix) blue to green < 40 mph:

 

Got a sequence of images, captured and processed by AS!4 and wavesharp.

 

C6(1500mm)/asi678mc uv-ir cut.

 

typical operating settings on camera:

 

[ZWO ASI678MC], Capture Area=320x240, Colour Space=RAW8, Gain=167, Exposure=2.0000ms, White Bal (B)=92, White Bal ®=62, Brightness=30, 

Duration=124.994s, FrameCount=48441, ActualFrameRate=387.5452fps, TimeZone=-7.00

 

40% of 48,000 frames. Very slight sharpening in wavesharp. Only color correction.

 

Looks like I captured the ingress of carbon-dioxide haze as the planet rotated.

 

These are gallery images, click to see them better.

Album: Mars Feb 23, 2025 Scottsdale Good seeing

8 images

0 comments

 

 

Bob

 

Edited by Bob Campbell, 25 February 2025 - 01:14 AM.

[Doug_Hole]

Mars from last night, I can see the planet is begining to shrink quite a bit, I think my colimation was good but it may need some slight adjustments. Valles marineris is still visible!

 

Mars (30K frames, 90% stack) 

 

 

[Winteria]

Mars a couple nights back. Good seeing.

 

Clouds not readily visible in color are apparent in the UV shot, mostly along the northern terminator.

 

[Craigar]

Have good seeing right now in 90260 but Mars is soooo close to the moon - should I shoot it?

[Winteria]

Have good seeing right now in 90260 but Mars is soooo close to the moon - should I shoot it?

Why not?

[Doug_Hole]

Mars a couple days ago, I still managed to see detail through the eyepiece! I think its because I can now colimate my telescope much better with a laser colimator.