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Posts Made By: Joe Ulowetz

August 6, 2003 09:49 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

My first Mars photo

Posted By Joe Ulowetz
This was taken yesterday at 9:15 UT 8/5/03 with my Celestron 5i and Phillips ToUCam. I stacked 2 barlows to get approximately f/36 (2x + 1.8x + f/10 scope). I grabbed 10 seconds at 5 fps (using k3ccd tools that someone mentioned here the other day), exposure 1/25 sec, and processed the whole sequence through Registrax; none of the images looked substantially different from the others, so I just tried using them all. I'm reasonably pleased with the outcome.

I did try to collimate my SCT on Vega before shooting Mars, but I could see that the star would only focus to a (small) blob even though the diffraction rings looks centered. Partly that may be from the seeing, but it might also be because I store my telescope inside the house and just brought it out to observe. I'll try letting it cool down outside for a few hours tonight and try again. The Clear Sky Clock predicts excellent seeing in my area (Chicago) after midnight tonight so I'm optimistic that I might be able to do even better.

Thanks for looking,
-Joe

August 20, 2003 10:36 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Mars photo color question

Posted By Joe Ulowetz
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

August 25, 2003 09:27 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Mars August 24

Posted By Joe Ulowetz
I had a very sucessful (and long) night Saturday; I still haven't done preliminary processing of some of my images yet. (By the way, if you're running out of hard disk space during the night, I found that using something like WinZip reduces AVI files by 97%. It takes about 5 minutes on my laptop to compress down 1 GB so I can free up space and keep going.)

Celestron 5i, ToUCam, f/30 1/33 sec exposures in K3CCD tools at 7:21 UT, 300 frames processed in Registrax.

I'm very pleased with the detail I've been able to pull out using only a 5" scope.

-Joe

September 3, 2003 10:18 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Map of Mars?

Posted By Joe Ulowetz
Can anyone recommend a link to a detailed map of Mars that labels features such as craters? I'd love to be able to identify impact craters on my photos (aside from Hellas). I did find a nice map of albedo features:
http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/mpf/marswatch/marsnom.html

Thanks,
-Joe

September 5, 2003 09:25 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Why you should cool down your telescope

Posted By Joe Ulowetz
I usually take my C5 out a few hours before trying to photograph Mars, but I forgot to do that Wednesday night. The attached photo shows the results: for the first hour I consistently had bad seeing, but later on it improved. Images were taken every couple of minutes and processed the same in Registrax. (Please ignore the color balence; I'm still working on that part).

-Joe

September 16, 2003 04:37 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Cloud on Mars?

Posted By Joe Ulowetz
My image below shows a circular feature paralleling the right (evening) limb of Mars from last night (about 3:30 UT). It looks like a processing artifact, but I could see it on my laptop screen while I was taking the image. I suppose it could be an internal reflection in my telescope, but it only appears in that one part of Mars. Did anyone else photograph Mars last night and see (or didn't see) this?
Celestron Nexstar 5i, ToUCam, f/30, 1/33 sec
300 frames processed in Registax 2, enlarged to 200%.
Thanks,
-Joe

November 25, 2003 10:15 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Sunrise on Syrtis Major

Posted By Joe Ulowetz
I had a few hours of clear skys last night with seeing better than expected. Saturn wasn't high enough yet, but Mars was very well placed. It's less than 12 arcsec now, but there is still detail using my 5" NexStar.

Image taken 11/25/03 03:29 UT (CM=260)
ToUCam, 1/33 sec, k3ccd tools
about 250 frames selected out of 300
f/30 (3x barlow), plus 2x resize in Registax 2.

I was also thinking about the fact that Mercury can reach this angular size, although the lighting conditions are much more challenging and the illuminated fraction would be small. It will be fun to see if we can get similar detail next Spring when it has a favorable elongation.

-Joe

December 16, 2003 05:06 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Dust storm on Mars

Posted By Joe Ulowetz
I came across a story today about a spreading dust storm on Mars that may threaten the landers headed there.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3323095.stm

Does anyone have any addition info about this story, such as where it's located or when it started, or any photos?

-Joe

December 24, 2003 06:41 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Mars dust storm with NexStar 5i

Posted By Joe Ulowetz
It took a few days to process (and to warm up) but here is a picture I took Sunday evening of Mars. The seeing was not cooperating, and the occasional gusts of freezing Chicago wind didn't help either, but I can still make out some features although Mars is only 9 seconds now and I'm using a 5" SCT.

Because there are some features visible, the dust storm certainly isn't planet wide, and maybe it stopped growing? It certainly seemed to kick up fast last week.

Happy Holidays and clear (windless!) skies to all!

-Joe

January 21, 2004 07:12 PM Forum: CCD Imaging and Processing/Solar System

Help with Saturn Image

Posted By Joe Ulowetz
I'm hoping someone can offer me advice on what I'm doing wrong. I've been fairly successful with Mars last year, and I took some good images of Saturn in October and November, but I must be doing something different/wrong now.

I'm using a ToUCam and Registax 2 with my NexStar 5i. The processed image of Saturn looks like it didn't stack correctly. I tended to overexpose my images of Mars, so I was making a deliberate attempt to keep the exposure down on Saturn, but am I going too faint? Maybe the individual frames are too faint for Registax to reliably line them up?

I was trying to keep the exposure gain as low as possible because other images I've done show a lot of noise if I have it high. But maybe I need the higher gain and compensate for the noise with lots of frames?

Thanks,
-Joe

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