In Melbourne, the weather has been very poor, continuing a frustrating and difficult planet season. The other evening a fellow club member managed to do some imaging on a night that the rest of us had written off. So last night, we took a gamble on some pretty dicey conditions and managed to get a couple of hours when other people were reporting rain and hail not that far away. We did have some clouds racing through that we had to wait for on a couple of occasions, fortunately not rain clouds
We were glad to have at least tried last night in light of the sparse opportunities lately, but the seeing proved to be pretty ordinary.
The Mars image was just a test run in hope of better conditions for opposition in December. It was only at 11 degrees altitude. It rose in the only direction that we can see that low. In any other direction it would have needed to be at least twice that altitude for us to have even seen it. It sort of looks like Mars, it's round and red
We were disappointed not to get the seven moons possible with Saturn. It too was quite low that late at 26 degrees which wouldn't have helped.
All good fun. We can only hope for some improvement in the weather soon.
All images taken with our usual 6" SCT set up.
