Mars morning of Dec 1st

[Quark]

Hi All,

Imaged Mars this morning Dec 1st from 3:25 CSST for a 97 min session.
Captured 5 IR images and 1 RGB.

It was a fine morning with no cloud or wind, the seeing was fair averaging about 5 1/2 / 10. I have captured Olympus Mons again but this time it was close to the CM for my final image. It is clearly visible however it looked better when imaged crossing the terminator in my previous imaging session where it was throwing a shadow.

I have put the 5 IR 807+nm images into a fairly high res animation and posted the individual frames as well. The 2nd image in the sequence is labeled and presented with a clean copy for comparison.

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/uploads/MarsAnim20091201.gif


I suspect there is a dust storm in the Mare Boreum region near the North pole. Note how on the labeled image, that the region where the indicating line is pointing is clearly more hazy than at the same latitude but further West. Not sure about this and I will seek council on this matter from the marsobservers group.

Attempted 1 RGB but I think with Mars at a relatively low altitude that a colour image would be best achieved using IR G B, perhaps next time.

These images were captured with my 16" F4.5 GEM mounted Newt with a 5 x Powermate, Orion manual filter wheel, Astronomik Type II RGB and IR 807+nm filters.

For this imaging session my setup was working at 8 x, these images have not been resized or resampled, this is the image scale this setup delivers.

Thanks for looking.
Regards
Trevor

[iceman]

Nice work Trevor, I like the second one. Good detail with the volcanoes!

[Quark]

Yep stuffed up again, these images are from this morning, the morning of Dec 2nd, I need to catch up on some sleep.

Cheers
Trevor

[Paul Haese]

Nice images Trevor, the phase is now getting quite nice. I should get out there and image Mars myself.

[multiweb]

Very cool - pretty close up. :thumbsup:

[Quark]

Thanks Mike, this face of Mars is a bit bland but theres a fair bit to see in these images when compared to a Mars map, the animation highlights Olympus Mons quite well.



Thanks Paul, nice photo, yep time to get at it. This morning when I captured my final avi at 5:02 CSST Mars had climbed to about 33 degrees above the horizon.



Thanks Marc, it was nice to be out imaging with no cloud or a howling gale threatening to lift my dome off of its base, for a change.

Pretty pleased with these results, especially the detail present around the South polar region and of course Olympus Mons.

[bird]

Nice work again Trevor, good to see the clouds have finally cleared off.

cheers, Bird

[jjjnettie]

Thanks again for sharing your work with us Trevor.
Always enjoyable.

[slippo74]

Lovely done Trevor...

[Quark]

Thanks Anthony, the altitude of Mars is becoming more convenient and the phase is changing quite markedly.

Your idea of a CCD in a finderscope worked a treat. Didn't have to take the DMK out to go between Mars and Regulus, saved me a lot of time.



Thanks very much Jeanette, glad you liked it. It seems that the time involved in putting together a descent animation is inordinately long compared with the couple of seconds they run for. But I do enjoy doing it.

[Quark]

Thanks Cristiano, appreciate your comment.

[peter_4059]

Great work Trevor. I really like how the rotation is evident in the images 3-5.

Peter

[kinetic]

Brilliant Trevor as always.
I dunno what you have to do around here to get an image of the week
but that's gotta be up there!

I don't think half the people on here realise how small 9 arc sec
really is. That is imaging excellence. Can't wait till opposition.:thumbsup:

Steve

[DavidU]

Awesome set Trev.:thumbsup:

[Troy]

Nice pictures Trevor your also showing some of the benefits of a large scope.
:)

[Matt Wastell]

Thanks for sharing Trevor. Mars is a tough target and you do it very well!
Looking forward to the closer pass. Keep sharing your images please!

[Quark]

Thank Peter, the rotation period of Mars is only slightly longer than that of Earth at 24hrs 37mins 22sec's so to demonstrate its rotation there must be a reasonable gap between captures. To me it is quite surprising just how much rotation there is in my animation over the relatively short period of 97 min's.



Thanks so much for your very kind words Steve, I do appreciate it.

We are so fortunate that there are some very gifted planetary imagers in Australia, they set the bar very high but I have found them to be most approachable and I am grateful for the encouragement they have given me.

I am quite sure that as Mars approaches opposition they will post some stunning images. I do feel that my work is improving but I have a long way to go to catch up.



Thank you David, although this particular face of Mars really displays little in the way of albedo contrasting features, I am most pleased with this result.



Thanks Troy, imaging in IR cuts back considerably on the light reaching the CCD, so yes, having a large aperture is most beneficial as I can still maintain my histogram level at a descent frame rate. Maintaining the histogram level is vital to revealing the small scale detail such as individual volcanoes on Mars.



Thank you Matt, so glad that you enjoyed these images. I am continually experimenting with my setup and I reckon by opposition, given descent weather, I hope to produce better images. I must say I am getting quite excited at the prospect, but then I am a bit of an excitable bloke.