I started with some preliminary videos without a Barlow while I was waiting for the telescope to cool and the sky to darken, but my plan was to spend the bulk of my observing time with using the 2x Barlow.
Now that I'd done this a few times it was fairly easy to get the target into the webcam field of view even when using the 2x Barlow. I spent 5 minutes or so getting the best focus that I could and recorded a 4 minute video. I repeated this another 3 times and once more with a 5x Barlow. It was much more difficult to track the target when using the 5x Barlow. Not only does it move across the field of view much quicker but it also accentuates the difference in responsiveness when tracking in altitude compared to azimuth. This in turn makes it much harder to focus the target. As a result I only managed to record 1 minute of material with the 5x Barlow.
Just looking at the raw videos it was obvious that I had some better quality images. A Registax processing session later and I had my first pictures of Mars that I am pleased with! As is the way with post-processing, the final image can look completely different depending on the chosen settings. Here are 2 of my favourite images from the videos using the 2x Barlow:
The polar ice caps and some of the darker upland regions are very clear in both images.
The video using the 5x Barlow wasn't as successful and it looks as though I didn't focus it well enough. Having said that, there is some detail and it's no worse than my early efforts with a webcam so hopefully I'll be able to crack it in the future. Here's the best of the high magnification images:
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