Mars from Flinders

[rumples riot]

Well I have returned from The Flinders Rangers. We had a mixed bag over the weekend. Clouded out Friday night, Rain Saturday and clear skies Sunday night. The best night was Saturday as it turned out. In between the clouds I snapped off a few Avi's and managed to capture Mare Erythraeum region. The seeing was at its best near 6/10. Unfortunately we had just packed up for the night when the clouds disappeared and the seeing looked very good. Sunday night the seeing was around 2/10 at best. Beautiful dark skies and the scenery was magic.

Anyway here is the shot.

[h0ughy]

is that showing that duststorm to the lower left? nice shot too!!

[matt]

Nice, rumples. Considering the conditions. Good to have your images back.

[asimov]

Very nice Paul.

[rumples riot]

H0ughy yeah I have jsut checked and it appears there are storms in that area of the image. Not entirely sure if I got the region right. The seeing and storms have made it look different to the maps.

Thanks fellas for the comments.

[rumples riot]

Just checked again and the region is correct. Dust storms were running rife.

[atalas]

Nice shot again Paul , plenty of detail still visible so It can't be a big dust storm I'd say .
My best views at the eyepiece were in 2001 just before the dust storm,now that was a planet wide dust storm that one,couldn't see anything when that one hit.

[h0ughy]

Way to go Paul, now your doing the weather on Mars :lol:

It is very clear and easily as good or better than some of the shots being put up on Spaceweather :)

[RB]

Yeah I agree, easily as good or better.

Well done Paul.
Hope you get some more shots to add to the collage.

:)

[Robert_T]

Hi Paul, yeh that dust storm by the 29th actually stretched from Mare Eryhtharaeum through Margaritifer Sinus to Sinus Meridani - where I think one of the Mars Explorers is (dusty solar panels!).

cheers,

Robert Theunissen
_________________________
Mewlon 210 and Neximage

[beren]

:) Top image Paul ...BTW thanks for posting some ToUcam settings in your recent posts , came in handy for me :drink:

[Mick]

Sweet image Paul, I had a go at stacking photos on the weekend makes you appreciate how hard you guys work to get results like this.

[rumples riot]

Hey thanks chaps. I had another go at processing the image and did a ME convultion this time and an unsharp mask with some gamma settings in Astra Image. I think that this image is much better this time. What do you all think?

[vindictive666]

nice picture paul


btw have you got any shots of the surrounding area ? (flinders rages i mean?)

i like the second one


:)

[RB]

I kinda like em both Rumples.
Hard to pick.


:thumbsup:

[rumples riot]

John, yeah got some images from the Flinders Ranges. Beautiful part of the world, will post some of them when I get around to some processing.

Thanks for the comments guys.

[davidpretorius]

nice image, it would have been great to see what your gear could have captured on monday night at star camp. It was magical!

[rumples riot]

Yeah Dave, it would have been interesting to see what it was like. I just posted another image from the same imaging session in another thread. Probably my best for the season. From the descriptions that I read in the official Snake valley thread it sounds like the seeing was sensational. Glad you guys had a good time.

[ving]

great stuff paul :)
nice stormage!

[Starkler]

There were brief moments when the seeing settled and you could see all the details seen in the recent Mars pics visually and sharp. :party:

[rumples riot]

Wish I had got that up in the Flinders. What Mag did you have to see this sort of detail? Barlows? EP? When ever I look at Mars or any planet I can't use a barlow or Powermate because the image breaks down too much. Mind you the 2.5x make my scope 6250mm. Detail is then lost. Only in really good conditions near 9 or 10 would I try this.

[davidpretorius]

birds black and white image on the screen was very close to his red one he stacked and posted on the forum. I believe he has a 5x televue???

He was talking about the webs of fine structure that are next to main dark structures. Also something "mons" was popping into view on his screen.

Us silly buggers had lost the plot by 4am and started to go barlow crazy. Ken who hates his 6.5mm series 500 (aprox 230x in his scope) saw the cassini ring on saturn. We then went about barlowing the 6.5mm with a 2x gs and again the image was clear, we then tried a 6.5mm a 2.4x barlow and again, it was clear, a little washed out, but clearer than my image ended up!

There was a 4mm cheap dork smith eyepiece from one of the kids scopes and so in it went and we then proceeded to barlow it again.

With my 12mm (@100x) I could clearly see the dark markings on mars