A surprise Mars from tonight 18.11.2020

[+Graham]

 

Set up and started to do a run on Mars.

 

The seeing was terrible and the wind was buffeting the Mac so badly I decided the night had very little chance of producing anything.

 

How wrong was I  😮.

 

I only did a single proper run with a SER file of 20,000 frames before packing away.

 

It was only after aligning and stacking this SER in Registax and playing with the wavelets did I realise just how much detail and colour I had captured. 

 

It just goes to show that even when conditions look bad you can still be surprised by what you capture.

 

Mac 150

2.5 X Barlow

Captured in Fire Capture

Processed in Registax 5

 

Note to myself --- Must collimate the Mac properly.

 

Edited November 18, 2020 by Graham

[+Ibbo]

Is that the dust storm I have heard reports of I wonder?

 

[+Graham]

Looks like something is going on 

[Nightspore]

Nice capture, I think I can see the 'eye'. I observed Mars visually last night about an hour up to transit. I thought the southern pole was difficult to see, like it had been a few weeks ago, but then brightened again. I put it down to combination of bad seeing and Mars getting further away. But a summer dust storm is a distinct possibility.

[Nightspore]

I found this.

Edited November 19, 2020 by Nightspore

[Nightspore]

I had another visual session last night on Mars with my 150mm Newt'. It seemed very bright, particularly the polar cap. I could even pretty easily use a Baader 610nm Red long-pass filter. Surface features were hazy and undefined however (except for the cap itself). I assume the storm is still raging somewhat, the dust clouds possibly have a high albedo, explaining the brightness compared to the previous night. 

Edited November 20, 2020 by Nightspore

[+Graham]

That's interesting. 

Did set up last night but the clouds beat me to it.

[Nightspore]

Mars was definitely brighter last night than the previous night. Could have been the transparency. I only got an hour or so last night before the clouds came. The OTA had just cooled down nicely then cloud!

[Guest]

I had a visual session the other day and saw the south polar cap with a dark region surrounding it. As it was damp outside, I didn't want to risk taking my laptop outside. I got something using my DSLR and telescope at 1540mm focal length. As the conditions did not let me use more than about 100x focal length, I did not try a longer focal length.

 

Although I have done shots at over 9 metres focal length, I get better results with my Bresser Electronic Eyepiece.