Mars and Moon image through the obsessionator

Lads,
I went through the images and these are the best of what I could out of what we captured..

This Mars image is 2100 frames stacked in registax with some minor changes in photoshop.
I'm still not really happy with it, I'd prefer it abit sharper compared to images 2 years ago although this is a much bigger image scale as we used a 5x barlow here.
I tend it to have a more sandy colour then a real red, that's just my preference as that's how I see it in the eyepiece.

This moon image is a single frame highly cropped with the canon 300D, I tried prime focus but was unable to reach focus as expected so I had to do eyepiece projection using the canons original lens and a 26mm T5 nagler.
This section of the moon was just breath taking through the binoviewers
:shock:

Look closely at the left side of the image, the moon hardly has any (what you might call) flat surfaces in that area it so pulverised with craters and mountains.
The bmp image was a little sharper and alot bigger, you really got the feeling that the craters center and on the left were like bowls, they were so 3D. I've left this one a little off white, if I apply "correct" white balance it gets a little washed out and the craters loose their depth.

This is a single frame of the Copernicus-Aristarchus region, the right handside of the frame is slightly out of focus, unavoidable really given eyepiece projection which is why i try to avoid doing it this way if possible.

Aristarchus was amazing at higher powers, it was like looking into a ridged cereal bowl that had been 1/4 filled, I've never seen that kind of detail.

Here is a shot of Tycho, the top pic is a closeup of the top of this pic.

I think this one is a little too stark but again if I apply "natural" likeness it gets a little washed out, the detail is still there at the expense of a natural representation.

and here is one rather featureless quadrant of the moon.


Seems like I'm never able to get the moon is at 50% or cresent phase, its not easy to image it when its full.

Holy Moonshots Batman!
They came out great!
Imagine what you could get with a proper set up!?

I like the image of Mars.
I too had a sandy colored image after processing but I
pushed the reds to make it a bit more 'Marsy' if you know what I mean.

Dave, some of those single shots are like webcam shots!!
Imagine getting a few and stacking them!

Great stuff!

I got enough images to stack but as I was holding the camera to the eyepiece with my hands so the images were too far out for registax to work with them.

Man it was cold that night, when the wind picked up it got seriously cold, I couldn't fell my chin anymore :lol:


For the Mars shot, Frank was capturing the AVI on the laptop while I focused it and during the exposure I kept the planet in the FOV, at times the wind changed and had an effect on the scope.

Super images Dave, Mars looks great, keep up the good work

Dave/Frank,

Do not be shy or apprehensive about oversampling your result with Mars. When you have a good number of frames for stacking, your S/N ratio is so high that you can oversample (ex. 150%).

Folks like Damian Peach, Pete Lawrence, Paolo Lazarotti et al often oversample their images for the same reason (high S/N).

Thanks Gary,
I went back and corrected the colour on the first moon image, I think i was just too tired at that stage and just gave up, now with fresh eyes its easy to fix it.


Mars also suddenly looks a little grainy so thats now fixed,

Isn't it amazing how the image looks fine when your finished and when you come back a day later its like "what was I smoking" its alot grainer and paler then I thought :shock: :lol:



The white areas at the bottom of the Mars previewer image (Hellas) is alot whiter then the real thing, but there is some compatible details in there.
The area called "chaos" (the brighter small area on the top left almost looks like an imaging artifact. Syrtis Major and Mare teranium are clearly visible.
Thanks Anto for the advice, I' might give that a go.