It had been a while since I photographed Mars. On Sunday, November 13, the conditions were favorable with a completely open sky. As a setting I had my TAL200K with ASI224MC camera. Furthermore an ADC and barlow x2. The polar alignment went flawlessly with an “excellent” result and only 8 arcseconds deviation! In total I have been outside for 3 hours and I have made 8 shots of 3000 frames (145fps). The recordings were made via SharpCap 4 and saved in SER format.
On Monday morning I have the SER files with AS3! stacked and edited in CS4. Personally, I didn't think it was bad and could compare the details with the Mars Mapper. However, I received feedback from Johan R and Walter about: where the polar cap was and why the picture looked so red. In the meantime I had also sent my photo through the VVS maillisting where I received the same feedback from Geert VDB and Luc DS. So back to the drawing board.
Most planetary photographers shoot with mono cameras and RGB filters. Few do it with a color camera and that's where the problem is. The colors of a color camera do not always correspond with reality, so with the ASI224MC. The white balance must be adjusted to R52(R58) and B99(B99). Since the recordings had already been made, I got the tip from Walter to split the SER files into R, G, and B images. This was done with PIPP software. Then stacking with AS3! (25% retention of the frames). Using WinJupos I then merged the obtained R,G,B photos where the gamma of Blue is 2x higher than R and G. This way I get an RGBB image.
This image was edited in CS4 and in DeNoise AI.
The result is a beautifully detailed Mars image with a more realistic color and a visible polar cap. A satisfied amateur astronomer 😊
