Mars but why aren't the caps white?

[Zuts]

Hi,

I am finding Mars very hard to process and can't seem to get white ice caps. I just have registax and nebulosity for processing. What am I doing wrong or is it just my data?

Edge HD 9.25 @ F20 about 1200/3000 frames processed

Cheers
Paul

[Wavytone]

Covered in red dust from the huge storm raging for the last month ?

[Zuts]

Thanks Wavy,

Yes there is a storm but other people seem to be getting nice white caps :sadeyes:

[astroron]

Probably comes down to the transparency at the time,both on Mars and at your location.

[Zuts]

Thanks Ron, yes, probably need more and better data.

My Saturn photo was taken on the same night and seems better to me but it was at the zenith, while Mars was quite low.

Cheers
Paul

[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. :)

[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 (http://pvol2.ehu.eus/pvolimages/mars/mars2018-07-11_01-56_RGB_cfo.jpg) 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 (https://photos.app.goo.gl/bRuHuhJPmcmEauzH8), 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 (http://pvol2.ehu.eus/pvolimages/mars/mars2018-07-07_02-20_rgb_cp.png). I'd guess the issue is very likely to be on Mars rather than your processing!

Search the Mars images in PVOL (http://pvol2.ehu.eus/pvol2/search/form) to see a good collection of recent images.

[Zuts]

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.... :)



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?

[andyc]

I saw something from Damian Peach saying that it's typically several months for a global storm, unfortunately that takes us right through opposition. Can only hope that it really starts to clear before we're too far through August and while Mars is still really close, but there's no guarantee of that...

[multiweb]

We might need a bit of this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmtDVM8YgTQ