Contains:  Solar system body or event
Mars on September 5, 2018, JDJ

Mars on September 5, 2018

Equipment

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Acquisition details

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Description

Imaged Mars on the evening of September 5, 2018 (UTC) under some of the best seeing conditions I've experienced this Mars apparition (CDS forcast was for excellent seeing with average transparency). Thanks to the steady seeing I was able to collimate my C8 prior to imaging (with the at best good seeing earlier this summer, my collimation was a bit off and my images suffered for it). I imaged using both a Baader UV-IR cut filter and the Celestron Mars filter. The Celestron Mars filter resulted in nicely high contrast images. The color balance is pretty funky (much like an IR pass filter), so I converted the Mars filter images to black and white. I then de-rotated and combined RGB and BW Mars filter images in WinJUPOS (7 RGB images, 4 Mars filter images). The end result was an RGB image with improved detail.

Imaged with a C8 Evo, custom Siebert 2x barlow, ZWO ADC, Baader UV-IR cut filter/Celestron Mars filter, and ZWO ASI224MC. Imaging train was configured to give me ~F/25. Image capture using Firecapture with gain set at 275 and exposure at 5 ms. Stacking in AutoStakkert3 (best 20% of ~50,000 frames captured over 300 seconds.). Color balancing and Wavelet sharpening in Registax6. Derotated and combined five images in WinJUPOS.

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