Mars 01-10-2010 in good seeing + animations

[Joel Warren]

Hey guys,
Had my best night of seeing yet for this apparition, tonight looks even better. Only bad part was I froze my butt off at 14 degrees fahrenheit for 1 hour. About the image, I went for a nice natural look and appearance in processing then enlarged and went after detail in the N. Polar Cap. The dark areas of the cap, rifts I think, have been confirmed in other images. There is a 25 minute difference in the animation frames. Comments always appreciated. Taken with a C11 and DBK.

[icytailmark]

awesome pictures. Im thinking bout selling my Skywatcher 12" Dob and buying a 11" celestron C11 or a 12" Meade equiv. I have always wanted to do astrophotography especially with planets.

[Joel Warren]

Thanks! Both of those scopes would be good, but the best scopes for planetary work are Newts. I prefer an SCT though. If I had a permanent mount/observatory, I'd go for a 16 inch Newt, but I'd say 12 inch SCT is about the biggest one guy can handle. I'm fairly big and stocky, and setting up the C11 isn't exactly easy.

[cookie8]

A beauty Joel. Very smooth processing too. Great work.

[asimov]

Good stuff Joel:thumbsup:

[Lester]

Very nice detailed images Joel, thanks for the view.

[TrevorW]

Top stuff Joel

[Clayton]

Very nice Joel. I like the tonal detail a lot

[Kevnool]

Great images there Joel.
cheers Kev.