Mars, Jan 3, 2012

[arbacia]

Taken this early morning. Regular seeing and some artefacts are present (see the arch at the lower left). I will tray to reprocess to eliminate them.

The clear spot near the terminator, at the right side, is Mons Olympus

Patricio

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice detail there!

[pixueto]

Impressive! What set up did you use? Is that the real size or did you blow the picture up?

[arbacia]

Hi.

Thanks for your comments.

My set up is described here:

http://stargazerslounge.com/discussions-scopes-whole-setups/168139-my-c11-cge-setup.html

Basically is a C11 CGE, with motorized Crayford focuser, Vixen flip mirror, motorized filter wheel, barlow and DMK21AU618.

For this particular picture I use a Barlow Celestron Ultima X2.

As SCT increase the efective focal lenght as we increase the lenght of the backfocus, the resulting focal lenght is 8,5m f/30 (as calculated from CCD pixel size and ephemeris planet angular size.

In Registax I made an aditional x2 resampling.

Patricio

[King]

Definitely the new standard for Mars. Outstanding shot. You make the boring side look interesting!

[htj]

Very nice. I'm guessing the seeing conditions are fairly good in Spain to get this sort of detail.

[CJBooth]

That's superb, very inspiring.

[arbacia]

Very nice. I'm guessing the seeing conditions are fairly good in Spain to get this sort of detail.

Hi,

No, no in my house. I have a lot of low level turbulence. Seeing usually is 3/5 or worse. Plenty of roofs, heaters fumes... Moreover I´m living near Barajas airport, the fourth european in traffic and placed in a confined wide valley.

Generally speaking peninsular Spain is a mountanous country. Particularly, Madrid is in the northern limit of a high plateau (650 m over sea level) and 40-60km southern of a 2000m high NE-SW mountain range. At 100 km East a 1500m high plateau and 100Km South a 1200m high range.

There are local areas of exceptional seeing in peninsular Spain, but this is not the general rule. However, at only 100 miles away of Madrid (5 million people), we have dark areas.

[Sam]

That's an awesome image of Mars, the image scale is fantastic and the quality of the image is quite staggering. The polar cap is very striking.

[speckles]

Best I've seen this apparition. Lovely image.

[pixueto]

I can't believe you got that picture from Barajas! I used to live in Alcalá de Henares. Are you using any LP filters?

[arbacia]

Hi, Alcalá de Henares, Human heritage place, I love it. I used to live in London...

Actually, for planets and moon, Light pollution is not relevant. However the local seeing conditions are. The recent development of lucky imaging techniques allow amateurs to do this kind of pictures under very poor conditions.

Unfortunatelly, at home is very confortable to use the telescope but LP is there and I left deep sky observing for field trips with my dobson 16".

At present I use a filter wheel with: Astronomik RGB type 2 filters, Astronomik IR Planet pro 742 & 807, Baader Venus U-filter and Baader Methane band 809.

I have a second set of low pass IR filters ranging from 680 to 1000nm that I got recently, I expect to test them soon.

A close friend has a dome observatory with a C14 in Sierra Morena (border between Castilla-La Mancha and andalousie (see my signature). There we forget about LP and the seeing use to be much better, not premium but better.

Patricio

[tibbs1972]

Superb image of Mars, amazing detail.

[Clayton]

A lovely shot Patricio

[davo]

Mars.. beautiful Mars :-)

Nice kit too :-)

[arbacia]

Hi,

Today I found that this picture I show you soon after I made it, has been selected as Amateur Photography of the Day for the February, 14 2012

Mars: the smooth hemisphere February 14 2012 Amateur Astronomy Picture of the Day - Astronomy.FM

Mars: the smooth hemisphere

Mars centered in Amazonis Planitia. This hemsiphere is particularly uniform at the telescope. The clear spot near the terminator, at the right, is Mons Olympus. This albedo feature was known by early astronomers as Nix Olympica (the snows of olympus). Polar Cap shows asymmetries and a lobe extending toward Utopia.

[Clayton]

Congratulations Patricio

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Neat! Congratulations.