geoflewis

Thanks, I'm equally blown away by all the very generous comments.

Hi both, I've had a go at annotating the map, which I've added to my original post so that it's easy to find.....

Thanks, I'm pretty stoked to have finally got it done. I tried in 2020, but had too many gaps to complete a full surface map.

Thanks, but please check out Kostas @Kon as he beat me to it a few weeks ago....

Thanks Kostas, I'll check it out.

Thanks Mark, I will try to annotate it, but really not sure how to go about that. In case you've not already seen it, a superb reference map can be found on Martin Lewis's (same surname, but not related) Sky Inspector website.... https://skyinspector.co.uk/mars-albedo-maps/

Thanks Jeremy, much appreciated.

I no longer subscribe to any magazines, but I will upload it to Flickr and share it with the on-line group for https://www.amateurastrophotography.com/, so will see if they pick it up.

Thanks, I really appreciate the feedback and I'm glad that you like it.

Thanks Stuart, as you will appreciate it is very difficult to get consistent data from the UK, so I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

Thanks Kostas, yes, it was good to get the missing data for the Syrtis Major region, at the start of January, which allowed me to complete the map. I would like to annotate it, but I'm not sure how to go about that. I might see if I can do it in Affinity Photo. The annotated maps that I have seen, include some diagonal writing, but I'm not sure that I have the tool to do that. Thanks also for the feedback on the earlier version that I shared with you privately; it gave the confidence to continue and change the longtitude origin, which has worked pretty well. I did also find another early image (the one from 31 October) that included the region east of Olympus Mons, which helped brighten the dark banded area there in my original version.

Thanks very much. Yes, apart from capuring and processing all the source images over the past couple of months, I think it's taken me several hours, over a couple of days to get the map completed.

It took me over 2 months to capture the data for this map, with eight source images being used from data collected from 31 October 2022, through to 3 Jan 2023. As is usual for the UK conditions, even on the clear nights that I could image, were very variable and conditons at Mars itself changed, with imaging starting when there was a dust storm in the southern regions and a strong polar hood to the north. Also some images were captured when Mars was waxing, through it's full phase at opposition on 8 Dec 2022, concluding when Mars was already showing a waning phase. I tried a couple of versions, in the end opting for a map with the 0° longtitude in the centre, partly as I fell it presends some of the major surface details better, but mostly because the data at the 180° region being quite thin and showing a strong dark band when displayed at the image centre. It is my first full map of Mars, so thanks for looking. EDIT: Here's my initial attempt to annotate the map....

Superb images Kostas. I completely agree with you that it is amazing what we can see / capture with amatuer equipment from our gardens and also wholeheatredly agree with Stuart's comments - a magician at work indeed....!!

Very nice images, excellent work

I bought a ZWO UV/IR cut filter when I bought the ASI462MC, but then tried the Asronomic Type 2 L instead and stuck with that through the recent Mars apparition.

Excellent

A very nice Jupiter. I haven’t imaged it for a couple of months, as its been all about Mars since November, but I might try a late season look in the coming weeks.

That’s a really excellent Mars, well worth the wait and the extra processing that you put into it.

Very nice, well done Reggie

Excellent animation

Sorry Stuart, I missed this when you first posted it, it’s an excellent animation.

Thanks Stuart, somehow it makes the still images come to life......

There you go, why didn't I think of that? One for another time maybe

Thanks Kostas, PIPP made it easy using the TIFFs I'd already created. Ideally I'd have liked a bigger GIF image, but other than resizing all the source images all one by one, I don't know how to do that. I couldn't see anything in PIPP to enlarge the images during processing, but I think it's still worked pretty well.