Sunday 9 December 2007

First go at Mars



Managed to actually get outside the last 2 nights, not for long but hey, i'm not complaining, better than nothing. Gave Mars a go for the first time Friday night . Took a little while for me to find it on the ccd chip and got 5 avi's before the cloud rolled in. Wasn't very happy with the first results as Mars seemed very orange and i couldn't work out why!?! Last night i gave it another go and noticed a setting i had missed on my webcam. Changed it slightly and presto, not so orange. Still think it needs a bit more toning down but still a massive improvement. Took 8 avi's at 450 frames each with my Celestron before the wind got too bad and then attempted to process in Gimp. Not quite the same as processing the Moon so lots more practice needed but i'm very happy with the end result for a first go.
The larger image and more orange colour was my first attempt last night at processing which i don't think is too bad but the smaller image i think is much better. More detail coming through and not so orange. Think the focusing is better in that one as well.
One thing i don't like about this Celestron is the focusing, very difficult to get focus and once you do have focus you have no way of marking where you reached it. Think a crayford focuser is needed!!

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