A nice settled night in Melbourne provided some good images of Jupiter and Mars. I should have stayed out for longer as Mars was still rising, but I called it at around midnight after which the seeing appeared to improve (based on others' results).
With Mars, I also took an overexposed image to try to extract Phobos and Deimos, and was able to (just) eek out enough signal for Deimos, Phobos was easier. The image below is a composite of multiple captures, with the moons layered on top of the well exposed Mars image. There appears to be some cloud at the 3 o'clock position on Mars.
Andrew
Capture details: Celestron Evolution 9.25" SCT @ around f/21 with 2.5x TV PowerMate, ASI 224MC, stacked in AS!3 with 3x drizzle, sharpened in Registax, final touches in Photoshop Elements, Jupiter shown at captured size, Mars shown 50% larger than captured.
Great pics again Andrew, really nice Jupiter and Mars looks great with the moons. I'm pretty sure now that feature above the cloud at 3 o'clock on Mars is not another cloud, but Olympus Mons itself. I've noticed with Mars that you have to let it get up high in the sky to get good quality video. Too early is no good, 12-2am is pretty good and later on (5am) it's getting worse again.
Thanks Nick, yes, Olympus Mons is the light red spot at the 1 o'clock position, while the clouds are the white splodges just at the rhs of the dark band in the centre of Mars (Sinus Sabaeus?). Peak viewing is normally when the planets approach the meridian, which for Mars is around 1am right now.
Definitely clouds there Andrew, your shot is very similar to one I got at about the same time with my old faithful Canon 550d. Great to have the moons put in there to add some extra interest to the image. I found the seeing on Monday night quite variable, ranging from good to looking like I was meddling with the draw tube trying to get focus!
I have some also taken with my mono asi120 which I have yet to process but the seeing was not great at the time I used it.
Thanks Marc, I just used the same settings I normally use for Saturn (375 gain, 100ms shutter speed), which blows Mars right out into super-saturation, but I could just extract Deimos. Next time I'll double the shutter speed, at +12.5mag it was a real struggle to find, Phobos at +11.5 was easy by comparison.
Thanks Marc, I just used the same settings I normally use for Saturn (375 gain, 100ms shutter speed), which blows Mars right out into super-saturation, but I could just extract Deimos. Next time I'll double the shutter speed, at +12.5mag it was a real struggle to find, Phobos at +11.5 was easy by comparison.
Cool - thanks I saw Phobos once in the FOV with Mars over exposed but never the other one.