Mars and Saturn from Melbourne this morning

[John K]

Hi everyone,

The seeing in Melbourne was good again this morning and was also able to have my first go at Saturn for the year which is now getting higher in the sky, however the seeing for Saturn had deteriorated quite a lot by the time I got the scope on to it.

Mars appears to show the volcanoes of Elysium quite well as well as some cloud around Olympus Mons near the terminator. There is also a real indentation across the North Polar Cap.

Hope others got out there and clear skies.

John K.

[Stefan Buda]

John,

My assessment of the seeing was, rather mediocre, but that might have something to do with the different apertures we are using or, as you say, it was better earlier on. I started imaging around 5:45. I will post something soon.

Anyway, you achieved excellent resolution.

Stefan

[John K]

Hi Stefan,

I always find that as dawn is about to break that the seeing deteriorates - perhaps this is because the sun's rays start to heat the upper atmosphere.

In terms of your image - looks like our Mars images are quite similar in detail but your Saturn image is fantastic - you have captured not only the Hex but also part of encke's gap if I am not mistaken! So the seeing was ok! I should have kept imaging but Saturn was starting to get faint.

Cheers,

John.

[bird]

Excellent images John

[John K]

thanks Anthony - good to see you posting and cannot wait to see your images this year of Mars and Saturn.

Below is also some commentary I received on the Yahoo Mars observers forumn about what we are seeing in these images at the moment from Roger Veneble which I think is a great explanation:

"Notice how the Olympus Mons cloud is much more prominent in blue, and essentially unseen in red. This is typical of clouds. In contrast, notice how the Elysium brightness is prominent in all three color component images, resembling the NPC in this regard. This suggests that there is frost in Elysium. Since frost, like the polar cap, can be bright in blue and can explain the appearance of Elysium in your image, it is not clear that there are (now) clouds in Elysium. I suppose they cannot be ruled out, either.One cool thing about your image is this: There is slight brightness in red at Olympus Mons, and there is a slight dark streak on the terminator side of it. This looks like the bright sunward slope and the darker antisun slope would presumably look. Certainly O.M. is often imaged as a dark spot in haze or clouds or dust, or as a bright spot when it has frost, but the low-sun-angle slopes are seldom imaged."


John K.

[Maurice]

Great work John.

Regards
Maurice

[U.K.Cowboy]

Super images John!