[foc (Ross)]

Hi Fahim,
Good luck with your job hunting, you need a rest from imaging now and then after all!

Looks clear tonight here until around 10pm and low winds for a change but Jetstream running in the order of 80 ks. Tomorrow the Jetstream is half the speed but it may be clouded out here. So it seems you may get a lot more images than me even with your job search.

I just bought a 2 terabyte portable hard drive to assist with storage b/w processing. Also helps for family photos and the like.

Of course you are only hearing from a beginner here but I agree with the issue of larger ROI when tracking imprecise. Often find I need to capture Mars with Firecapture's default Jupiter's ROI setting otherwise I suspect I lose more with frequent tracking corrections than I gain with the faster capture and smaller file sizes. I should have another go at training the drive. Mind you tracking seemed brilliant on Tuesday but the 30 knot winds then considerably reduced that advantage.

I have done 5 minute Mars captures at times but 5 minutes seems a little longer than many do for Mars with scopes of your capacity to resolve, is this to allow for interruptions after which you trim in PIPP or some such? Or do you think that as Mars's rotation is 24 hours you should be able to image for 2.5 times the capture time that is ideal for modest sized scopes with Jupiter and its 10 hr rotation?

Back to the Dust storm issue, did you see the recent post today of a new Mars dust storm on Cloudy nights. Perhaps you made a amateur worlds first observation!