Mars using Sony Handicam

This shot of mars was taken using my 6 inch f8 (ATM) Dobsonian and Sony TRV17E digital handicam, eye peice projection through 9 mm plossle and 2 x Barlow. I just hand held the camera at the eyepiece and by tilting the camera I can get about 250 frames as the planet moves across the field of view.

Camera settings were:
AE = sunset/moon
auto shutter off
optical zoom about 7x
exposure about 70 %

best 176 frames out of 296, processed in Registax supersampled 1.5x, further processing in Gimp using Panorama tools 'correct' add-in to remove blue/red fringeing and slight unsharp mask to improve the final image.

Sequence taken 2003/7/29 12:41 (UT) CM 62.81 dia 21.88 arcsec , Mars was at Alt 42.5 degrees at my location.

I am new to this so any feedback on the image much appreciated. Also interested to hear of any others success with this technique particularly with regard to camera settings.

Many thanks

Attached Image:

Hi Mike -

That is a very good first image, especially considering that you got it by handholding the camera with a non-tracking telescope. It looks like you have captured the solus lacus region of Mars.

If you have a way to leave the camera at a fixed distance from the eyepiece (with a device like the Orion steadypix mount or similar), you might get even better results.

-Jake

Hi Mike, you did a great job considering everthing. It looks like one or two images didn't get aligned properly though. Other than that, good work.