These pictures of Mars were taken with the following exposure settings - all pictures were generated by processing AVIs in Registax. All 1 minute AVIs were made up of exposures that were 1/25 second per frame. Pictures all taken on 24 June 2003 at 3:24 am.

From left to right: 50, 100, 200, 300, and 350 frames stacked - out of a total of 600 frames.

My interpretation of these results are as follows:

• 50 or 100 stacked images (first 2 images) does not give good results.
• 200 stacked images provided the best results (out of 600 frames)
• 300 and350 stacked images added too much noise since lower quality frames 'mess up the higher quality frames'

Please note: these are the results for my telescope, camera, seeing conditions combination only. Your results may differ. The point here is that it is worthwhile to do some experiments of your own.

Pictures all taken on 24 June 2003 between 2:29 and 2:45 am.
Camera settings: 10 frames per second for 60 seconds at 1/25 seconds exposure time per frame.
Optical setup: Meade 10 inch GPS with #124 2x Barlow lens and a Logitech Quickcam Pro 4000

From left to right: zero, 50, and 60 percent gamma used. The optimal setting seems to be between zero and 50 percent.