A cool night with inconsistent seeing, but waiting for a good stretch of time allowed me to get a good image. I also got the chance to test a custom green filter made by Chroma.
This project came to my attention in November when fellow planetary imager John Boudreau approached me with an idea for a filter he proposed to Dick Stewart of Chroma at NEAF 2019. The basic idea behind this filter is that planetary imaging is not affected by light pollution, so we can close the sodium LP gap present between the red and green filters of a typical LRGB set.
In my tests, this new filter passes through ~25% more light than the standard green filter. Mars is not an ideal test candidate because it is already a bright target, but I was able to confirm that the filter works and color balance is not an issue. John has mentioned to me that he hopes Saturn will benefit most from the extra brightness, but I suspect it could help on Jupiter too.
The only thing against this filter right now is that it costs $325 USD before shipping for a threaded 1.25" version. John hopes the price can drop if more planetary imagers are interested (and possibly opening the door to bringing back Chroma's pre-2019 blue filter with a wider bandpass).
If those of you with Chroma filters want to know more about this one, these threads on the Cloudy Nights forums are good reads:
Would you be interested in a filter set tailored for planetary imaging? (With enough interest here, it can happen.)A custom Chroma filter for brighter G channel results in RGB imaging
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