Mars 7th-8th Feb

[Sebbie]

Hi everyone

My best two exposures from last weekend imaging runs. Taken 23 hours apart they show development of the north polar anomaly over the course of a Martian day. Cloud around Elysium appears quite red, is it a dust storm and does it have something to do with the polar event?

Second capture combines 1400 frames of 60 fps avi, the first one 750 frames of 30 fps avi. Taken at f40 via a combination of TV and Meade 2x barlows. Sky is noticeably brighter in the first image as it was taken only five minutes before the local sunrise (6:24am LT).

Thanks for looking,
Sebastian

[John Hothersall]

That's fantastic detail, looks like you had steady seeing. Never seen a storm on Mars before so it looks interesting.

John.

[Stefan Buda]

Great work Sebastian!

It is quite clear from your images that the disturbance started between February the 7th and 8th. I picked it up on the 9th and I knew that it was not there on the 7th, but now you have narrowed down that interval.

[Sebbie]

Thanks John, I'm speculating re the storm given that this is my first ever Mars imaging season :)

I had some dust bunnies on my colour cam of late causing some artefacts during stacking. In hope to see what's real and what's not I put together following collage of all images taken on the morning of 8th Feb. These are non drizzle stacks with frame count ranging from 100 to 800 @ 30fps. I'm including raw and colour corrected version.



Thanks Stephan, I think there may be a sign of the streak developing here but leave it to the experts to confirm. Should've continued to image after the sunrise.

Waiting for weather to clear again.. :rolleyes:

Cheers,
Seb

[Stefan Buda]

Hi Sebastian,

The feature you have marked with the red circle is not the disturbance that we observed on the 8th and following days. However that last image insert with the red circle does show a small bright dot at the right place. See my annotation.

[Sebbie]

Thanks for correction Stefan, I thought it was too far to the south west..

Curled up shape of Utopia region is most curious though, is it a long standing albedo feature?

Consulted few charts and noticed the Umbra area at 260 deg longitude.

Extract from albedo map by Mario Frassati - http://www.britastro.org/mars/mapfras.htm

[Stefan Buda]

That is a good map, but it doesn't show the polar regions. It seems to go to about 70 degrees north and south. There is a collection of maps in the files section of the mars observers, yahoo group.