[iceman (Mike)]

Hi guys.

I got up at 1am to image Mars yesterday morning. Unfortunately I didn't leave the scope out all night to cooldown, so the first 45 minutes of the session produced no worthwhile results, as the tube currents in the OTA meant the image was wobbling about all over the place.

By about 2am the scope had settled and I was getting more detail. Here's my best effort from the night.

Unfortunately the colour is a little off, a bit too yellow for my liking, but i'm pleased not to have any hard edge artifacts and the SPC is quite well defined for a change.

Also as an exercise to show how much closer Mars is to us now than it was just over 2 months ago, i've included on the attachment my very first Mars image this apparition (back on 29/07/2005) showing the same face, when it was only 11.05 arcsecs in diameter. It's now a whopping 18.39 arcsecs and will still grow more over the next month.

I'm going to get a 5x powermate, very soon. Mars oppositions only come around once every 2.5 years so I can't miss out on an opportunity to get an image of Mars as big as it can be. Also, Mars oppositions will be smaller for the next 10 years as well, so there's no time like the present!

Anyway enough blah, here's the image.