Conditions: reasonable seeing, hazy, passing clouds, weak wind
Setup: Celestron C14 telescope with 2x Televue powermate (f/22), Lumenera SKynyx 2-2M (with Schuler Ix infrared filter) and Lumenera SKynyx 2-2C (with IR reject filter) cameras
Processing (Registax, Photoshop): selected and stacked best 300 frames out of 3000 (infrared image), best 150 frames out of 3000 (RGB image). Wavelet sharpening, scaled up 150%, color balance adjust, curves and levels adjusted.
Image aquired with my astro-buddy, Michael Rask, at his great observatory. This was only our second Mars imaging attempt. It was the first time we used color camera and first time we tried an infrared filter.
Image scale was 0.12"/pixel, scaled up 150% for this presentation. Mars diameter was 14.6", the smallest resolved surface features are roughly 0.6" across. Exposure time on the infrared image was 36msec, aquired 20:36 UT. The RGB version was taken one hour later with an exposure time of 57msec. The time difference between these two images is too large to permit a combined image to be made - surface features won't align due to the rotation of Mars! In order to do a IR - RGB combination the time difference should be less than ~10minutes. We could have used a shorter exposure time on the RGB sequence to better freeze the seeing. In addition, we should have aquired 6000 frames in each sequence. Still, these Mars shots turned out to be some of our best from this apparition and they won us the 1st prize in the Mars imaging competion arranged by Danish astro retailer, Astro A/S! Lęs min rapport om turen HER!!
Here's my main page where you can see more of the pictures I have taken so far.
Comments greatly appreciated! (mikael@leif.org)
