Mars & Saturn Jan 23rd 2012

[Quark (Trevor)]

Hi All,
Imaged Mars this morning in reasonable seeing, Olympus Mons is centrally located and the Propontis Complex is just visible to the Sth of it.

Just as I turned my attention to Saturn the cloud started wafting through and all of my Saturn data was effected to some extent by it, the histo was continually swinging up & down which was a shame as the detail in between looked pretty good.

Have attached 1 RGB & 1 807nm IR data for both Mars & Saturn.
The residual of the material dredged up by the Great Saturn Storm remains in a thin band of white material. By animating my RGB data it can be seen that there is still some structure to this band insofar as variations in width.

Thanks for looking
Regards
Trevor

PS; All data is at the native scale delivered by my imaging setup, via a 5x PM.

[lepton3 (Ivan)]

A nice Mars Trevor, with even some detail in the polar cap in IR.

Interesting to see those clouds are still there on an image I took a day later.

-Ivan

[Clayton]

Nice work Trevor
Saturn is not giving herself up easily this year, so far at least.

[iceman (Mike)]

Nice one Trev, looks great!

[Paul Haese]

Nice Trev, Mars is getting bigger; time for some action.

[Shiraz (Ray)]

very nice Trevor - clouds stand out well on Mars. Regards Ray

[Quark (Trevor)]

Originally Posted by Shiraz

very nice Trevor - clouds stand out well on Mars. Regards Ray

Thanks Ray, it is so long since I imaged Mars. This is the first time with the Flea3 and I need to rehash my capture regime a bit to deal with the problem of saturation of the icecap.

Originally Posted by Paul Haese

Nice Trev, Mars is getting bigger; time for some action.

Thanks Paul, yes at 11 arc seconds it is becoming a viable target.

Originally Posted by iceman

Nice one Trev, looks great!

Thanks Mike.

Originally Posted by Clayton

Nice work Trevor
Saturn is not giving herself up easily this year, so far at least.

Thanks Rob, yes conditions have not been good for Saturn thus far, at least out here.

Originally Posted by lepton3

A nice Mars Trevor, with even some detail in the polar cap in IR.

Interesting to see those clouds are still there on an image I took a day later.

-Ivan

Thanks Ivan, this image of Mars was capture the day after yours. As all of my data goes to various research groups I label my data with the UTC time & date and as the UTC date doesn't change until 10:30am CSST this means that if I capture Saturn or Mars after midnight the correct UTC date is still that of the previous day, relative to local time.

[Lester]

Very nice views again Trevor, the detail is so crisp. I cannot remember seeing clouds so prominant on Mars in past oppositons.

All the best.

[icytailmark (Mark)]

ur so lucky to be able to image trevor we had nothing but rain here in sydney all summer long

[Matt Wastell (Matt)]

Nice stuff Trevor - send some clear sky our way!

[Kevnool (Kev)]

Great work again Trev.
There Lookin good.
Youve been quiet of late.

Cheers Kev.

[Quark (Trevor)]

Originally Posted by icytailmark

ur so lucky to be able to image trevor we had nothing but rain here in sydney all summer long

It has been unusually poor weather out here as well for imaging over the last few months Mark. We normally have clear sky and little rain, it is afterall a desert type environment and a very long trip out here from Sydney, about 1200 km west. I hope we all get better seeing in 2012.

Originally Posted by Matt Wastell

Nice stuff Trevor - send some clear sky our way!

Thanks Matt, these Mars images were captured in clear sky but just as I was about to do my first capture run for Saturn it totally disappeared from the screen, obliterated by cloud. Reckon a clear cut case of the application of Murphy's Law for sure. All of my Saturn data sets were captured with the histo swinging up & down between approx 1/2 and 3/4 of my normal histo setting. Hope you get some clear sky soon, I rely on you and Dave for updates on old Sol.

Originally Posted by Kevnool

Great work again Trev.
There Lookin good.
Youve been quiet of late.

Cheers Kev.

Thanks Kev, have been away on holidays. Hope to organize another observing night soon, tentatively Friday Feb 24th.