Mars 24/4/12 Ice cap?

[Nova]

My first attempts at Mars. all are 3000 frame captures stacked and processed in Registax 5.1. Im curious to know if that could be an ice cap ive captured at 3 o'clock? At first I thought no way its in the wrong place but could be angle my camera is rotaed at? Any comments welcome

[Ibbo!]

Looks like the polar cap to me

good capture

have you tried using your barlow

Steve

[Pete Presland]

well done, looks like one to me as well.a Barlow will be essential for getting a decent image scale.

[Nova]

Yes. A barlow was used in all 3. The top left is at 2x and the rest are using my 3x tal. Being an f5 scope its not really ideal for planetary imaging but its giving me some good practice and perhaps one day ill upgrade to something with a longer fl

[Jupiterholic]

Afraid its not the ice cap at 3 o clock. Thats more likely to be a very thick cloud formation on the limb of the planet. But don't despair as you have indeed caught the ice cap aswell. At low magnifications like this, usually when Mars is showing a phase, the ice cap causes the disc to distort slightly in images and many people record a slight bump on the top of the planet. Thats the north martian pole.

I've hugely blown up your image to show you where it is. And if you look carefully its also slightly lighter than its surroundings.

So there you go, possible clouds and the ice cap. Not bad going.

[beamish]

JH is correct I'm afraid, it is reflected light from cloud, on the limb the PC is declining and is where JH has pointed, still a god catch tho

Karlo

[Nova]

I did notice the "bump" on the top of the image and wondered what it was. Still happy with the outcome. Thanks for your comments

[Cloudwatcher]

If you enlarge,lighten,brighten and sharpen a bit you will have a very nice planetary portrait.......

[Nova]

Thats an impressive improvement cloudwatcher. Do share your methods!!

[Clayton]

Nice result in the end Steve Now you have clouds and the NPC

[Nova]

Yeh im pretty happy. Still waiting for Cloudwatcher to share his method

[Clayton]

If you enlarge,lighten,brighten and sharpen a bit you will have a very nice planetary portrait.......

I thought he did