Please,please can anyone identify this strange object

[UK1 (Rob)]

Have this photo which puzzles us. It was posted on the image page, was out early one morning just messing around looking at Jupiter and the time was about 6-40am only had about 20mins to go before Mars went, so moved scope around zoomed past Venus saw a red dot that come into view though camera view finder very small dot got what I thought was Mars a quick focus and then started to snap away. After down loading pics later that day came up with this pic. Not look like Mars to me as it is not round and a lot of craters on left side and smooth front. My son says could it be …………...er…..Phobos ( I wish lol )

[duncan]

Hi,
I was going to say Mercury but the image scale looks to big.
Anyone else!.
Cheers,
Duncan

[DavidU (Dave)]

what type of camera? exposure time? what scope? Are they stars in the background or noise?
Can you give a more accurate RA/DEC etc?

[Robh (Rob)]

You need to be more specific. You've given us an approximate time but what was the date and what is the image scale? For that size it must be blown up quite a bit. How many degrees was it roughly from Venus? If it is in the last week and you went from Jupiter through Venus then onwards, it's probably Mercury. Mars is now on the Jupiter side of Venus. Did you notice the Moon nearby?
At that time of morning there's likely to be a lot of air movement with the rising Sun. The disk is roughly circular. I'm going for bad seeing and/or an out of focus Mercury with the "smooth" bright side facing the Sun. Mercury would be very low in the sky. Was this the case?
I'm guessing the irregularities, including "craters", are due to poorer seeing and/or noise.

Regards, Rob.

[astroron (Ron)]

What Size Telescope?

[iceman (Mike)]

I think i probably is Mars, but those "features" aren't real. It looks like it's distorted from abberations in the lens, lack of focus, blurring, etc.

Is it a full crop from the DSLR?

[stephenb (Stephen)]

Originally Posted by iceman

I think i probably is Mars, but those "features" aren't real. It looks like it's distorted from abberations in the lens, lack of focus, blurring, etc.

Is it a full crop from the DSLR?

I'll go with Mars at this point WITH some serious optical issues BUT I agree, we need more information on the image; exposure, size of field, was it cropped? type of telescope etc...