Weird and Gilly

Folks - just had a crack at Mars with the DSI. I was pleasantly surprised but I have to say that planetary processing seems harder than other processing I've done... The Telvue PowerMate is a dream.

Anyhow, enjoy!

Cheers

Dave



Object - Mars
Exposure - 0.02 sec
Image no. - 150
Imager - DSI
Filters - None
Mount - AP1200
Scope - C8 SCT = 2.5 Televue PowerMate
Software - Autostar Suite, Photoshop 7

Nice one Dave

Not bad at all Dave. Did you use an IR blocking filter? If not you'll find that a big help.

The IR filter that comes with the DSI adds so much guff to the image that I probably won't use it again. The trouble is, is that its just marginally bigger than the chip and slips over it. Its encased in a plastic circle to allow for precise centering. So, its damned hard to remove any dust motes. And with it so close to the chip (probably a matter of millimeters) any dust motes show up as humungous blobs when imaging anything bright. And no, I really don't have the time to take flats at the mo

That said, the IR filter really only comes into its own when I image in colour. Which I rarely do... So I see it at a surplus to requirements. It does help reduce star bloat, but at the expense of increasing exposure time. So I really see no advantage at the mo. Still, if it turned out that that it would make a big difference then I'll probably invest in a 1.25" IR filter.

There's a lot of high thin cloud around tonight so I thought it wasn't too bad a shot. I actually got detail on the same image taken without the Powermate - the disc was about 2.5 times smaller than the image above.

Anyhow, thanks for comments lads - appreciate it.

Dave

Nice pic Dave.

Kerry Astronomy Club were out last night also, and we were of course looking at mars. The features in your pic were seen through the eye piece. Does anybody know what the darkest and lightest part of the surface visible in this image is known as...

Hi guys

Just found a handy piece of software that answered my question . It called "mars previewer II" and is avialable at

skyandtelescope.com/resources/software/article_328_2.asp

The dark region on left is syrtis major, on the right is sinus sabaeus, and the paler white region is made up of Moab,Eden, Arabia and Aeria.

Thanks again for the pic Dave.