Mars, 2nd attempt

Well the rain cleared off and the skies became nice and transparent again tonight so
I decided to give Mars a go.
It's very well placed from now on and over the next few weeks should get better.

I've a bunch of AVI's to process but here is a quickly done one,
I could see nice detail through the 15mm eyepiece as the air was
super steady.
The webcam picked up a little more than I expected so that was a nice surprise.
I've heard a lot of people complaining about how uninteresting Mars is
but I just cant disagree more.
I think it's a very dynamic planet.
I love the fact is has very recognisable geographic features that you can hunt down as the planet rotates.

This shot still shows a little bit of a phase I think.
The polar cap is larger and much more elongated than a few months ago.





ETX - 125PE, 2x Barlow, SPC900 Webcam, IR cut filter & Registax.

Resampled & Resized:

Great shot, the polar cap is very prominent there.

Nice shot Frank... what settings did you use on the webcam?

Nice one Frank,

The polar cap certainly seems bigger than when I last viewed it.

Great shot Frank!
I'm looking forward to having a go myself when I get some free time (and some clear weather :roll: ).
I have my 2x barlow and helical focuser at the ready.

Thanks lads.
How does the colour look to ye?
I was expecting it to be a bit more...well...red!
I'm learning that a lot of things in the sky don't live up to their names,
e.g. the great red spot on Jupiter.


I used a 2x barlow with the webcam at 30fps with
manual exposure to record 2147 frames.
Lowest quality setting at 85% leaving 1441 to be stacked
using a resample factor of 2 with 'Mitchell' filter.
Then the final stacked image resized down to 75%.
Levels adjusted in Photoshop.

I have some captures I yet need to process that we taken
with a 5x powermate.

The ETX is a grand little scope for the planets, nice and fast
but methinks I really need Santa to bring me a bigger one.