Detail at the South Pole of Mars

    

I hand picked and stacked only 100 frames to create this picture. Normally I use at least 200 frames. During the next few nights I will capture longer AVIs so that more frames can be stacked to create a more detailed and more noisefree image.

I am VERY happy with this result however. Now that the comparable very highly detailed Hubble Space Telescope images are available I can see exactly when to stop reducing noise and when to stop sharpening. Up till now I worked in the dark - and many of my guesses were wrong and off track. So my pictures should get better from here forward.

The next image was taken by the Hubble Space telescope on 26 August 2003. I placed it here to compare its detail to my image on the far left.

          

Note added - 9 Sept. 2003 - After I calibrated my computer screen correctly I noticed the previous 2 pictures I posted here look horrible. Using just brightness changes did not fix it, so I reprocessed it from the origional raw image.

Picture of Mars taken at 2:12 UT.

The second picture was processed to have nearly the same color scheme as that of the Hubble Space Telescope. Ugly.

The third beautiful image was taken by the Hubble Space telescope on 26 August 2003. I placed it here to compare its detail of the South Pole to my image on the far left.

My point here being that we should process our images to look best based on the equipment we have. I think it is senseless to try to make my images look like that taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

I take nearly daily pictures of Mars and STILL I spend time looking at other peoples pictures too. It is GREAT that there is such variety in the different styles people use to present their pictures.

If everyone's pictures of Mars looked exactly the same it would be of no use to look at other peoples' images since it would all be exactly the same. Luckily we have variety.

My pictures look like no one else's and I make no effort to follow anyone's example as well. You should do the same when processing your astrophotography pictures ... be different.