| Date: 18 July 2003 | Telescope: 10 inch SCT | AVI: 1/10 sec at 5 fps for 100 seconds |
| Time: 05:09 and 05:13 (GMT + 2h00) | Camera: Logitec Quickcam Pro 4000 | Processing: 100 frames stacked |
| Observatory: Hartbeespoort | Magnification: 3x Tele Vue Barlow | Software: K3CCDTools and Photoshop |
| Mars Apparent Diameter: 19.8 " | Illuminated Fraction: 0.927 | Distance from Earth: 0.4737 ua | Central meridian: 25.29 |
The image of Mars on the right is one raw extracted frame from the dust-infected AVI. This is what dust donuts look like ... these donuts are so ugly it does not even make me hungry!!!
While capturing the image on the left, I tried to keep the image on the worst donut-infected area of the image for a full 100 seconds.
The image in the center was captured using a relatively dust donut-free area.
The negative impact of dust donuts are obvious. So, how do I safely physically remove those dust particles ?
Unfortunately K3 CCD Tools insisted in using a cut-off-image of Mars as basis for the stacked image in the center, so it is cut of somewhat.
| Date: 18 July 2003 | Telescope: 10 inch SCT | AVI: 1/10 sec at 5 fps |
| Time: 04:49 (GMT + 2h00) | Camera: Logitec Quickcam Pro 4000 | Processing: 100 frames stacked |
| Observatory: Hartbeespoort | Magnification: 3x Tele Vue Barlow | Software: K3CCDTools and Photoshop |
| Mars Apparent Diameter: 19.8 " | Illuminated Fraction: 0.927 | Distance from Earth: 0.4737 ua | Central meridian: 25.29 |
| Date: 18 July 2003 | Telescope: 10 inch SCT | AVI: 1/10 sec at 5 fps |
| Time: 06:23 (GMT + 2h00) | Camera: Logitec Quickcam Pro 4000 | Processing: different nr. of frames stacked |
| Observatory: Hartbeespoort | Magnification: 3x Tele Vue Barlow | Software: K3CCDTools and Photoshop |
| Mars Apparent Diameter: 19.8 " | Illuminated Fraction: 0.927 | Distance from Earth: 0.4737 ua | Central meridian: 42.83 |
From left to right: 50, 100, 200 and 300 stacked images - out of 3000. 50 frames is not enough, 100 is about right, 200 and 300 frames add to many low quality frames to the result.