Mars 8-25-2003 to 8-26-2003

The Mars opposition of 2003.  Photographs were taken with a 3com WebConnect webcam (at medium resolution) at the prime focus of my f/15 7" LX-50 Meade Maksutov-Cassegrain Telescope.  All photos are at f/15 unless otherwise stated.  This was my first night with the Televue 2.5x Powermate, so some of the shots are at f/37.5.

All of these images were stacked using Registax 2.0.  Since the atmosphere refracts the Red, Green, and Blue channels by differing amounts, the color shift option was used to compensate for this effect.  Wavelets were used to increase the sharpness.  The files so created were then further processed with Corel Photopaint 9 using the unsharp mask, tone curve, hue, Gaussian blur and contrast.  All of these are eyeballed for best iamge.

Note that the seeing changes from shot to shot.  Some are clear while others are adversely affect by the seeing conditions.  Generally, as the night progresses, mars gets higher in the sky and thermal gradients due to the hot ground and cold air dissipate.  These lead to sharper images.
Left: Time: 8/25/2003 11:04pm PST Stacked 74 frames

Right: Time: 8/25/2003 11:11pm PST Stacked 55 frames
Time: 8/25/2003 11:39pm PST  Stacked Frames: 84 Shot at f/37.5 with a Televue Powermate 2x Barlow.  This was the first time I used the Televue Barlow.  The top two photos are the same ones, but the right image was processed with higher brightness.  Notice that the brighter image brings out more details in the dark regions near the polar cap but the details on the cap itself are lost.  The bottom left image shows the two images superimposed with the polar cap region emphasized from the upper right photo and the rest of the image from the right photograph.

Bottom Right: Time: 8/25/2003 11:39pm PST  Stacked Frames: 26  shot at f/15
Left: Time: 8/25/2003 11:47 pm PST    Stacked Frames: 80

Right: Time: 8/25/2003 11:51 pm PST    Stacked Frames: 70

Last Photos Taken Prior to Opposition.

Unfortunately, it was cloudy the night of opposition...
Time: 8/25/2003 11:54 pm PST    Stacked Frames: 51

A. Left: Time: 8/26/2003 12:01am PST    Stacked Frames: 110

B. Right: Time: 8/26/2003 12:01am PST     Stacked Frames: 120 (same as above but different processing)

C. Left: 8/26/2003 12:01am PST A and B from above are averaged

D. Right: 8/26/2003 12:10am PST Stacked Frames: 84

   
Note that in frame A, the surface detail is better than in frame B; but, frame B shows better detail in the polar cap.  There are always trade-offs when working with unsharp masks and wavelets.  Frame C was averaged in Photopaint to combine the best of both images.