Mars and Saturn in good seeing

[andyc]

Mars and Saturn in beautiful seeing last night from southern Sydney (24th). My best images yet, if not quite up to some of the wonderful images on here, but may be close to the limit of my 200mm scope.

Mars is showing some nice weather, with a white patch of late afternoon clouds on Elysium Mons on the lower left, clouds filling the Hellas Basin at the top, and dark features including the large Syrtis Major patch looking just a little like India in the centre. It's late afternoon on Gale Crater, and Curiosity Rover, which is above Elysium Mons near the left edge, and it's morning for Oppy, near the right edge!

Mars - stacks of the best 2,000 from 13,000 frames, Saturn, best 1,000 from 5,000. 200mm f/5 Newtonian, barlowed to f/30, ZWO ASI185MC camera.

[Atmos]

They are fantastic Andy, that 8" is punching well above its weight :)

[kkara4]

I am with Colin on this, excellent images for 8"!

[Stefan Buda]

Andy, I agree, you must be very close to the limit of what a 200mm aperture can deliver and did an excellent job with the processing too.

[Camelopardalis]

Great pics Andy :thumbsup: they're right up there!

Looks like the seeing deteriorated between the Mars and Saturn captures though, fickle as the atmosphere is :sadeyes:

[SkyWatch]

Well done Andy: they look great.
They confirm my visual observations (in pretty average seeing) of a lot of cloud in the Hellas basin (it looked like a giant ice cap!) and Elysium Mons. I wasn't seeing things after all, so thanks for that!!!
Keep up the good work. :)
- Dean

[andyc]

Thanks all for the kind comments! Now hoping for another night or two a little like that one.

Dean, I loved that I could see a bit of Mars weather, clouds at north, south and Elysium. I'm married to a planetary scientist - this was one of the few of my astro images she really related to :D She's not so fussed by nebulae...

Dunk, I don't think the seeing got any worse, but Saturn is fairly dim at that focal length, and so I think the difference in quality was all to do with exposure times being 6x longer. I ought just to image it at f/15, but the image scale was tempting... want to crack the hexagon!

[Camelopardalis]

Andy, yeah it's there mate I can see it :D tweak the contrast a bit and I'm sure it'd pop out.

[multiweb]

That's really sharp Andy. :thumbsup: I haven't been imaging lately because of work but I've noticed that we've been having a very good run of seeing in Eastern NSW for the past few nights.

[andyc]

In fairness, if Stefan's struggling to see it, it's probably tricky...


Thanks! Yes, it looks like there was a great run of seeing and clear skies, and I'm kicking myself for not getting out more often, but busy times cut in to astro playtime! Glad I got to see a night of 9/9 on Skippy Sky with mars big and high.

[Camelopardalis]

Wow...erm...thanks for the snub?! :P

[andyc]

Ah sorry Dunk! I think I'm less convinced that its there, but I didn't mean to imply you were seeing things :eyepop: I should have more faith :fight:

[RobC]

Great images Andy, Congratulations . I suggest you don't discount Dunk's advice and stretch it a bit more.

Cheers

Rob

[Camelopardalis]

LOL@Andy...try processing the 100% (not resized) image and you'll probably find it presents itself more readily, likewise the bands on the planets surface and in the rings. The resampling effectively reduces contrast.

[andyc]

Long since been there and done that on the originals, stretched & curved all over the place! There's a slightly darker region, but the hexagon's 'points' are decidedly buried in the granularity. Attached images are 100%, with minimal jpeg compression, not that far from the quality of the tiffs.

[Camelopardalis]

Fair enough, the eye sees what it wants to :D still got to be happy with that out of a little 8". By all accounts, f/20 would suit those pixels better.