Mars is becoming visible again at long last! Here's a picture from the lovely clear night of Saturday 14th January 2012. Picture taken about 00:30 UT 15 Jan 2012, via a DBK colour camera taking 30 seconds worth of 30 frames per sec at 1/109 second exposure, a 2x Barlow lens, on the 20" scope, masked down to 8". 450 pictures were chosen and stacked, sharpened, and a tweak was made to the blue and green channels to compensate for the difference in focus between these colours. Well that's what I did. I'm amazed how much detail I got given the conditions and fact that Mars is tiny! It is a mere 10.2 arc seconds across, or about 180 x smaller in angular extent than the moon. It is half the diameter of earth, 4200 miles, at a distance of about 83 million miles away. You can see Syrtis Major on the left, the large Hellas basin above it, which is near the south pole. Mare Erythraeum is the dark patch at top, the light gap at top right is Chryse, followed by Mare Acidalia. The large area at centre is Arabia Terra. Below Syrtis Major, is Utopia (just at edge), Boreo Syrtis, Protonilus and then a stretching dark finger along the bottom right, Deuteronilus. The light area at bottom right is Vastitas Borealis (North at bottom).
Sunday 15 January 2012
Mars
Mars is becoming visible again at long last! Here's a picture from the lovely clear night of Saturday 14th January 2012. Picture taken about 00:30 UT 15 Jan 2012, via a DBK colour camera taking 30 seconds worth of 30 frames per sec at 1/109 second exposure, a 2x Barlow lens, on the 20" scope, masked down to 8". 450 pictures were chosen and stacked, sharpened, and a tweak was made to the blue and green channels to compensate for the difference in focus between these colours. Well that's what I did. I'm amazed how much detail I got given the conditions and fact that Mars is tiny! It is a mere 10.2 arc seconds across, or about 180 x smaller in angular extent than the moon. It is half the diameter of earth, 4200 miles, at a distance of about 83 million miles away. You can see Syrtis Major on the left, the large Hellas basin above it, which is near the south pole. Mare Erythraeum is the dark patch at top, the light gap at top right is Chryse, followed by Mare Acidalia. The large area at centre is Arabia Terra. Below Syrtis Major, is Utopia (just at edge), Boreo Syrtis, Protonilus and then a stretching dark finger along the bottom right, Deuteronilus. The light area at bottom right is Vastitas Borealis (North at bottom).
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