From: "Duane" <macastronomer@mac.com>

Date: November 2, 2005 1:27:51 AM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: Colors are making me mad!

That's a good idea. I may try that tomorrow. I hope I get time. Tonight was extremely 

frustrating, but I think I found out some detrimental issues.

The first is my scope is vibrating. I think the camera, barlow, filter wheel and cable 

dangling off the end is a bit too much weight. I threw a weight on and balanced it out.

Right after that my scope quit tracking. I don't know if my battery got low (it seemed fine) 

or if I've got a slipping gear. It's been doing some other weird stuff lately and I need to 

open up the Meade and see if it needs surgery.

I didn't feel much like taking my other scope out after all that so I called it quits.

Duane

--- In Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com, "Milton Aupperle" <milton@o...> wrote:

Duane;

Rather than wait for clear nights and Mars to rise for trying things

out in the dark, why not image some some terrestrial day time object,

like a bird house or a color full plaque or a color charttarget nailed

to a fence?

This way you don't need to shoot and stack 1000+ frames in each color.

You can shot 1 frame in each color and then play with that.

And at least you have some idea of what the real color should be when

your processing. Mars is a slippery object to try and get colors to

balance properly.

HTH..

Milton Aupperle

--- In Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com, "Duane" <macastronomer@m...> wrote:

Thanks for the tips. I thought the exposures had to be similar in

order to get accurate 

color. Obviously that isn't working for me :)

I will do that the next time around. I am very familiar with

Photoshop and had played with 

the channels quite a bit. But with either red blown out or blue

barely existent, there was 

just no saving anything. In fact, when pushed (or pulled) that far

it does some whacky 

things (especially to the saturation).

Now I know better, I can shoot better. I'll give it another try.

Looks clear tonight, I wish I 

could go out. Maybe I'll try tomorrow.

Wish me luck (I'll earn the skill later)

Duane

--- In Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com, "Duane" <macastronomer@m...> wrote:

I am trying to shoot with this B&W camera, and I must be doing

something wrong.

First off, I am having a lot of difficulty trying to get an

exposure that will work with all 

three 

colors. If I expose the Red properly, the blue is non-existant. If

I expose so the blue 

shows 

ANYTHING, the Red is blown way over-exposed.

OK, so I shot a few Mars shots and I stack them up. These are

straight from Astro IIDC 

and all 

three shots have the same camera settings. Put the red in the Red

channel, Blue in the 

blue 

and green in the green. What do I get? A very mucky red color that

doesn't show any real 

white or come close to the colors I get with color camera.

This time I did shoot  through an IR filter for all exposures.

Am I missing something there?

Please help me before I send this camera back for a color version :)

Duane