An 8" SCT was mounted on an AVX mount and an SVBONY SV305 camera fitted with the lens from a x2 Barlow was placed at the Cassegrain focus.
Pre-release AstroDMx Capture for Windows was used to capture a SER file of Mars with a Region of Interest of 480 x 480 pixels. The ROI nudge function in AstroDMx Capture (Shift plus a cursor key) was used to keep the planet in the centre of the ROI for the 5 min duration of the capture. The result was a 34825 frame SER file.
The best 30% of the frames in the SER file were stacked in Autostakkert!, wavelet processed in Registax 5.1 and post processed in the Gimp 2.10 and Affinity Photo.
The resulting image of Mars
A number of features are clearly visible, including Syrtis Major, Syrtis Minor, Sinus Sabaeus, the Helas region and the south polar cap (at the top).
The SV305 and AstroDMx Capture for Windows worked well together to gather data on Mars at a time when the Jet Stream was not moving overhead as it so often is here in the UK.
We are now very close to release, but the remaining tests have to be carried out before that will be done.
AstroDMx Capture for Windows, macOS or Linux (Including Raspberry Pi) can be downloaded freely here:
