Teeny Weeny Mars! :)

[iceman (Mike)]

Got up this morning to take some images of the GRS transit on Jupiter, but now that jupiter is rising earlier, at 4am it's further in the west and behind some tall gumtrees in my backyard.

So I decided to image Mars instead

It's small, but it's got a polar cap!

I've resized these 2x just to make them a bit bigger. In the eyepiece, it's still barely a disc. It was also quite low still and the atmospheric turbulance was shocking.

Anyway maybe i'll do a mars a month until opposition, just to see how much closer and bigger it gets as it approaches november opposition.

Thanks for looking

[rumples riot]

Mike are you using the filter that you bought? If not I heard that it is advisable to use it for Mars. Apparently it helps to bring out any detail that would be lost in the glare.

Incidently it looked just like that when I looked two months ago. I said to myself in the dawn light, well if that was Mars who cares.

I am hoping it will be much bigger in two to three months and then I might start imaging it.

Thanks for posting though. Good stuff.

[iceman (Mike)]

I am using the IR filter, yep.. it keeps the dust out of my ToUcam Whether it helps the image or not, i'm not sure. Haven't had a chance to do side-by-side comparisons yet.

I'm sure it'll get bigger and better to image.. just still a few months away. I will do an image a month though, and make a composite at opposition.

[ving (David)]

hehe well done mike!
our first mars shot on the board!


cant wait for it to come up a bit myself