Mars 29 Aug 03

I have been very unfortunate with the weather but the sky cleared briefly on 29th and I spent 2 hours collecting video. This is the result of processing what appeared to be the best clip.

6 inch f8 Dobsonian with handheld Sony handycam into 9 mm plossl eyepiece. No Barlow of any sort but using the cameras 2 x digital and about 7 x optical zoom for magnification. Camera on slow shutter '1' setting (25 frames per sec) and exposure adjusted for good contrast.

Because I tilt the camera to follow Mars as it crosses the field of view there is some chromatic aberation at the start and finish of the clip. I discarded the first and last 25 % and then manualy selected the best frames to end up with 237 frames out of close to 1000 original frames.

Processed in Registax and stacked best 124 of these. unsharp mask / blur in Gimp.

Video taken at 2003-08-29 12:49 UT, CM 148.01 Dia 25.06 arcsec Mars at Alt 67.1 deg. Seeing 6 - 7 /10.

The plan is to build an equatorial platform for tracking and fix the camera to the scope. Trying to hold the camera steady at the eypiece is not easy!

Thanks for looking

Mike Ashburn

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Very nice picture !
I use the same technique.. Holding the camera is not easy and to keep the planet in the center of the picture is even more difficult.
Congratulations !

This is the picture I took on august 27....
bye.

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