Mars April 6. South Polar cap and evening cloud

[Zac Pujic]

I had superb seeing this morning and took images of Jupiter and Mars. I only took a few of Mars since I had taken about 30 gigs of Jupiter images.

As usual none of the Mars simulators agree on what longitude is visible, however the dark area near the polar cap is Mare Sirenum (CM is around 152 degrees). An evening cloud is on the left hand (evening) terminator over the area Chryse. It is bright in blue so this suggests it is present high in the Martian atmosphere rather than being surface frost (which is dim in blue light and bright in green).

The polar cap appears split. The diameter is about 4.9 arcseconds and south is near the top.
31 cm Newtonian f/20. Astronomik filters. SkyNyx 2.1M camera.

Zac Pujic
Brisbane, Australia
http://astroimg.org

[mick pinner]

very nice Zac, l do like images of Mars well done.

[Ric]

Lovely image Zac.
There is quite a lot of detail present.

Cheers

[bird (Anthony Wesley)]

Hez Zac, that's a great image, well done!

Bird

[matt]

G'day Zac

Well done. Nice image

Good to see some Mars images starting to appear.

It's going to be great to keep an eye on these as the planet grows in size and becomes a little more favourably placed.

Now. where are the Jupiter images from this morning?

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Niiice!

Thanks for sharing it Zac.

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

Bring em on, I can't wait to see more of Mars.

[RB (Andrew)]

Ah nice to see some Mars images coming through.

Lovely result Zac.

[Rigel003 (Graeme)]

Is it Mars season already? Great image, Zac, with a lot of detail for such a tiny target at low altitude. Well done. Looking forward to more in the future.

[davidpretorius]

lovely image Zac....i must have a look at this little planet

[iceman (Mike)]

Nice one Zac. Can you post the original size? I've been eyeballing Mars the last few weeks and i'll be keen to give it a go soon too.

[ving (David)]

will you look at the sheer brilliance of that polar cap!!!

nice work