From: Phil Houston <pkh111@knology.net>

Date: December 23, 2007 9:36:25 AM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Mars Dec. 21

Thanks Alan,

I have been watching the weather in your area in hopes of a nice clear night for you to capture Mars but, wow, the forecast looks really nasty there this coming week at least.

This is a little off topic but I would like your thoughts on the issue of refocusing for each filter change.  My scope has a movable primary mirror which causes a focal length change when refocusing.  This causes the captured size to change between images and I try to correct for this in processing.  I don't know if your AP operates the same way but if so, how do you deal with it?  Process then resize or resize first then process?  Any thoughts from the Master. ;-)

Phil

On Dec 23, 2007, at 12:34 AM, Alan Friedman wrote:

Hi Phil,

Really nice mars shot - and very impressive resolution from a 6" scope.

Thanks for sharing it.

cheers,

Alan

On Dec 22, 2007, at 12:33 PM, Phil Houston wrote:

Hi All,

I have finished processing one set of images taken last night at
about 11:45 EST. This time a luminance layer was added to the RGB
color image. Two thousand frames were recorded for the luminence
through an IR block filter and about 1000 frames were captured for
each color. A stack of 280 were processed for the L layer and about
200 for each color. Final image asembly was done in Photoshop as was
the multiple unsharp masking and Gaussian blurring. Levels, curves
and hue/saturation were adjusted also.

I have three more sets to process and a Moon image. If any turn out
well I will post them.

Wishing you all, Happy Holidays and of course good seeing,

Phil

http://www.knology.net/~pkh111/q6mars122107.jpg

.