Mars photo color question

The photos of Mars I've been getting are extremely red. In fact I found that they have no blue component at all, so I'm wondering if I'm under the blue threshold for my camera to capture. Here's the specifics:

Celestron 5i, f/30, ToUCam, 1/50 sec exposures, gain set to minimum. If I drop the shutter speed down to 1/25 sec (the lowest setting) the image on the PC screen looks burned, and even at 1/33 sec it seems too bright in so I assumed that would make it worse.

Each photo is a composite of 300 frames taken using k3ccd tools and processed in Registrax.
Left image: Aug 10, right image: Aug 19 (note the larger apparent size and smaller polar cap).

Do I need to increase the gain in order to balence the color better, even though that will increase the noise?Thanks for any suggestions,
-Joe

Attached Image:

Hi Joe,

Very nice Mars images ,
have you been using the auto color balance ?
If not put a check in the auto box and let the
software search for a balance for about 10 seconds
and then un-check the box to freeze the color balance ,
this might help .

Thanks,

Wes Higgins




The photos of Mars I've been getting are extremely red. In fact I found that they have no blue component at all, so I'm wondering if I'm under the blue threshold for my camera to capture. Here's the specifics:

Celestron 5i, f/30, ToUCam, 1/50 sec exposures, gain set to minimum. If I drop the shutter speed down to 1/25 sec (the lowest setting) the image on the PC screen looks burned, and even at 1/33 sec it seems too bright in so I assumed that would make it worse.
Each photo is a composite of 300 frames taken using k3ccd tools and processed in Registrax.
Left image: Aug 10, right image: Aug 19 (note the larger apparent size and smaller polar cap).

Do I need to increase the gain in order to balence the color better, even though that will increase the noise?Thanks for any suggestions,
-Joe

I actually found I need the gain up just a little bit.. say 15 to 25% to get good color balance. Have others found the same to be true?