I took a few images of Mars last winter. The planet was fairly low in the sky, so I wasn't expecting a lot. However, given that I'm new to imaging, I was pleasantly surprised with the results.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/126488639@N08/14599520068/in/photostream/Comparing it to better images, mine looks a very dark red. It's definitely not the same colour as the pictures from the Mars Rovers! Now that I have PixInsight, I took a look at the colour components. I see the blue component is almost empty. There doesn't even seem to be enough there to boost. I guess I need to alter the colour balances on the camera.
As an experiment, I threw out the blue component, and replaced it with another copy of the green component. Now, I can adjust the RGB balances to approximate what I believe they should be (the image below is a bit rough, but it shows the idea).
https://www.flickr.com/photos/126488639@N08/14806011033/in/photostream/Is this an approach you'd recommend? Or would you keep the darker image? I can't help thinking that it's a bad idea to dump the original blue channel - even if it's insufficient, by throwing it away I'm losing
some valid information.
Thanks.
