The Chances of Anything Coming From Mars...

After my first unsuccessful yet instructive attempt at webcam astrophotography it wasn't long before I could have another go. The target was once again Mars but this time I was better prepared for what lay ahead. The million-to-one odds didn't seem unreasonable though...

I had realigned my finderscope during the day and had little difficulty in getting Mars into the field of view of the webcam. I spent a minute or so getting used to tracking the target and then changed the webcam settings to reduce the gain and increase the shutter speed. This makes the image dimmer and much easier to focus as well as stopping it from being over-exposed.

Once I had focussed the image as best I could, I increase the frame rate to the maximum setting. Although the webcam software claimed it could operate at 60 frames/sec it seemed to have an actual maximum of 15 frames/sec. Satisfied with the image I started recording and tracked Mars for 4 minutes. I then followed the same process while using a 2x Barlow which left me with 2 videos to play with in Registax.

Loading the first video into Registax there was an obvious improvement from my first attempt. Even looking at a single frame there were some discernable features. I aligned the frames using centre of gravity alignment and stacked the best 250 or so of the 3600 frames available. The end product wasn't going to win any awards but once I'd tinkered with the layers it was a marked improvement on my previous effort. If nothing else the polar icecap is clearly evident. Unfortunately the higher magnification video wasn't focussed properly so it didn't yield anything useful.

I still had a long way to go but I'll leave you with the best of my images and will return with my latest, and by far the best, Martian observation in a couple of posts time.