Mars, RGB & IR morning of Oct 25th

[Quark (Trevor)]

Hi All,

Imaged Mars this morning, Oct 25th, under clear sky but with strong winds. Without an observatory the windage on my 16" Newt would have made it impossible.

Experimented with higher frame rate, 30 fps and shorter exposure, 1/30 sec with higher gain to grab a lot more data.

My IR image is the best 800 of 7300 frames and has some fairly crisp detail considering how turbulent the air was over my observatory and how low Mars is to my local horizon.

This RGB image, although slightly deformed, still has some reasonable detail in it. By the time opposition comes around I hope to have fine tuned my capture and processing regime for Mars.

Thanks for looking.
Regards
Trevor

[Joel Warren]

Nice work Trevor. I knew right away when I saw your IR you captured the Solis Lacus region. You can also see the soutern edge of the N. Ice Cap.

[bird (Anthony Wesley)]

Nice work Trevor,

Bird

[Paul Haese]

This is a tough target at present. Well done on the capture.

[Quark (Trevor)]

Originally Posted by Joel Warren

Nice work Trevor. I knew right away when I saw your IR you captured the Solis Lacus region. You can also see the soutern edge of the N. Ice Cap.

Thanks Joel, this Astronomik 807 IR filter sure does a top job, hope to get some descent RGB's around opposition. I am really looking forward to your images at opposition with Mars at a much higher altitude.

Originally Posted by bird

Nice work Trevor,

Bird

Thanks Anthony, I expect much better images as Mars climbs higher.

[Quark (Trevor)]

Originally Posted by Paul Haese

This is a tough target at present. Well done on the capture.

Thanks Paul,
For this effort I setup a 24 hr 7 day timer to fire up my Peltier at 2:30 am for 30 min's so when I hit the deck at 3:00 am, by the time I had my imaging equipment setup my mirror had stabilized. The live image looked pretty crook until Mars climbed a bit higher at about 4 to 4:30 am.

It really is amazing how the IR filter cuts through the poor seeing and about 1000 of 7000 frames seems to do the trick.

[Lester]

Thanks for the view Trevor. Nice detail.