[Zuts]

Originally Posted by astroron

Hi Paul I get an extra ring around the rings that is not there in reality,is it my monitor or your image.
I do think by looking at your Saturn pic and Mars that the transparency was a bit soft.
Nice pics though.

Thanks Ron. Now that I look at some other images I think you are correct. Definitely the dust is making everything soft.

As far as the extra rings are concerned, when you are just starting out on Planetary, the more rings the better....

Originally Posted by andyc

Paul, the dust storm is substantially covering the polar cap on one side of Mars, but not so much on the other. Check out this image by expert Mars imager Clyde Foster, he was lamenting the sheer dustiness of the polar cap. Without knowing the time of the image, I'd guess yours might be of a comparable longitude on Mars. The polar cap is quite a lot clearer on the Valles Marineris side, though it's still a little 'dirty'. The boundary between obscured and not so obscured is is somewhere near Hellas, as in Christophe Pellier's image. I'd guess the issue is very likely to be on Mars rather than your processing!

Search the Mars images in PVOL to see a good collection of recent images.

Thanks Andy. Definitely it seems the dust is an issue. This is a problem as I would really like a good shot of Mars before it goes away. How long do you think before it all clears up?