Mars in IR morning Oct 22nd

[Quark (Trevor)]

Hi All,
Imaged Mars this morning in IR.
Was up at 3 am and my mirror was down to temp and stable by 4 am.

Initially there was not a cloud to be seen but as I prepared for my first capture my histogram dropped off by about 50%, yep cloud.

Several times I thought about packing up and going back to bed but eventually at 4:56 am the signal ramped back up and I was able to make two successful 3 minute captures in infrared.

I have posted the best of those two images. The seeing was good and even though Mars was only about 20 degrees above the horizon the live feed was quite stable.

In IR there is some surface detail visible, the dark region to the North is Mare Acidalium. The ice cap at the North pole is visible as is Mare Erythraeum.

Thanks for looking
Regards
Trevor

[bird (Anthony Wesley)]

Thanks Trevor, it's a difficult target still.

cheers, Bird

[Kevnool (Kev)]

Great image Trev.
It sure stands out in the morning sky.
I,m working 50 klm,s south of Wanaaring now so the skies are super dark.
Keep up the great work.
Cheers Kev.

[Lester]

Good one Trevor. It will be good to see Mars grow in size over the next few months and the detail sharpen.

[Quark (Trevor)]

Originally Posted by bird

Thanks Trevor, it's a difficult target still.

cheers, Bird

Yes, it is very low but Tim will be using the the Deep Impact spacecraft tomorrow, Oct 23rd to image Mars for a full rotation and he needs the amateur data now, well as often as possible over the next two weeks, so I am doing the best that I can. I have managed to image it three mornings out of the last five thus far.

Originally Posted by Kevnool

Great image Trev.
It sure stands out in the morning sky.
I,m working 50 klm,s south of Wanaaring now so the skies are super dark.
Keep up the great work.
Cheers Kev.

Thanks Kev, there sure is nothing like the night sky from the outback.

Originally Posted by Lester

Good one Trevor. It will be good to see Mars grow in size over the next few months and the detail sharpen.

Thanks Lester, yes, looking forward to opposition. I have not previously imaged Mars with the DMK so I am getting an early start in sorting out my technique for capturing it.

[DavidU (Dave)]

Thats cool. I didn't know the Deep Impact fly by craft was still operational.

[iceman (Mike)]

Nice Work Trev. I've been considering getting an IR-pass filter for a while for Venus and Mars. How do you find it?

[Quark (Trevor)]

Originally Posted by iceman

Nice Work Trev. I've been considering getting an IR-pass filter for a while for Venus and Mars. How do you find it?

Thanks Mike, have only had this filter for a short time but it seems to make a significant difference, especially when the target is close to the horizon, a noticeably more stable image from that with the RGB filters. I think the particular IR filter you need depends on your aperture. the 807 really does cut back significantly on what passes the filter and even with a 16" scope I am using a fair bit of gain. Astronomik also have another IR filter, I think about 742 that works well in smaller apertures.

Originally Posted by DavidU

Thats cool. I didn't know the Deep Impact fly by craft was still operational.

Thanks David, yes Deep Impact is still operational. Tim Livengood at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is involved in the EPOXI mission which is using the spacecraft for 24 hrs on Oct 23rd to image Mars. Tim needs amateur data for a couple weeks either side of this for his project. This is a bit of a problem for us as we only have a hour between 3-airmass and astronomical twilight to get the data. Also it is not just a matter of imaging Mars, for the photometric information that he requires needs a comparison stellar image, captured and processed exactly the same way as the Mars image, for comparison and Castor is that stellar subject which is even lower than Mars.

[matt]

I've had the 807 'Planet Killer' since the last Mars apparition.

It's a very nice filter and helped me achieve some very reasonable results in less than average conditions

I can highly recommend it, Mike.