Mars iamge an animation 12-21-09

[Joel Warren]

Hey guys. Not excellent seeing, not even very good, but the best I've had in awhile. Caught a nice orograpic cloud over Olympus Mons. There is a bright patch on the edge of the NPC that is interesting. Confirmed in other images and the animation I'm including, which is 3 frames, over 15 minutes. Not much rotation in that time span, like you would have on Jupiter. The NPC is rapidly shrinking now, or actually sublimating, causing all that haze you can see around it. Another volcano, Elysium Mons, is very bright on the morning limb.

[Joel Warren]

my usual presentation

[Quark]

Good effort Joel,

Like the RGB, has some nice detail showing through and as you have mentioned, clearly the NPC is shrinking.

The phase has really changed quite noticeably over the last month or so, looking forward to opposition at the end of January.

Thanks for sharing.
Regards
Trevor

[Inmykombi]

Very nice images.

I also cant wait until I get a decent squiz at Mars.

You have done well there.

cheers

[iceman]

Nice work Joel, lovely images.

[Joel Warren]

Thank you all for the kind replies. The bright spot on the edge of the NPC has been intriguing me. I realized I had an image from about 23 hours earlier of good quality that would make a nice gif, showing the spot rotating over a good distance. Anyway, here it is.

[telecasterguru]

Joel,

Very good work. Lots of detail in the images.

Frank