Mars with AstroDMx Capture for Windows, an 8” SCT with a 2x Barlow and an SVBONY SV305 camera.

A Celestron 8” SCT was mounted on an AVX GOTO mount. The scope was fitted with a 2x Barlow and an SVBONY SV305 camera was attached.

Mars was imaged using AstroDMx Capture for Windows using a region of interest of 800 x 600. A frame-rate of just under 100fps was used to capture a 5min Time-Limited SER file of 27,000 frames.

SER Player was used to process the file for gamma and gain, and re-save as a SER file. The processed and the unprocessed SER files were stacked in Autostakkert! 3. The best 15% of the frames in the processed SER file were stacked and the best 20% of the frames in the unprocessed SER file were also stacked. The resulting images were wavelet processed in Registax 6, post-processed and combined in the Gimp 2.10.

Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture for Windows capturing a SER file of Mars

Note the edge reticle with centre marker delimiting the region of interest.

The final image of Mars

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin