a so-so Saturn and a rather iffy Mars !

[glowingturnip]

I don't often do planetary imaging since I don't really have the focal length for it, but I finally got round to processing these two, which have been sat in my processing-to-do pile for ages...

 

Saturn, taken Aug 2017

 

Mars, taken during the opposition in May 2016, remember that ?   I think the dark blob to the upper right is Syrtis Major and the blob to lower left is Sinus Meridiani, though it's kind of hard to tell !

 

The Mars was taken through my old 750mm scope and the Saturn through my new 1000mm, other equipment as per sig, taken with the QHY through (ahem) a 2x barlow stuck in the end of a 2.5x barlow !

 

Hope you enjoy !

Stuart

[Pete Presland]

A couple of very respectable images there.

[glowingturnip]

haha, you're too kind :-)

[mikeDnight]

Lovely images considering the difficult low angle of the planet's currently!

Looking at your Mars image, and without knowing the time of observation, I'd guess the lower left shows Sinus Sabaeus and Sinus Meridiani, followed by Margeritifer Sinus, and Argyre showing as a brighter patch on the lower left limb. The dark area at top right would then equate to Acidalia.

I've attached an image of a Martian globe that I made from my 2016 observations, showing the face that I think is shown in your excellent image. I'd imaging the LCM in your image to be around 50° if I'm reading your image right. 

 

The globe and map are drawn with a diagonal prism orientation!

[glowingturnip]

wow, thanks for that, you could well be right.  I did look at a few online atlases, but wasn't really getting it.

I've got a timestamp on the original videos of 22:44 on 30/5/16 if that helps, although that could be +/- an hour since it was shot in Spain and I'm not sure which timezone the computer would have been set to.

Those are an excellent globe and map by the way, quite something.

[glowingturnip]

ugh, I've just noticed I've picked up a bit of a colour-cast to the background of the Mars image when I was fiddling with the saturation.  Oops

[mikeDnight]

33 minutes ago, glowingturnip said:

wow, thanks for that, you could well be right.  I did look at a few online atlases, but wasn't really getting it.

I've got a timestamp on the original videos of 22:44 on 30/5/16 if that helps, although that could be +/- an hour since it was shot in Spain and I'm not sure which timezone the computer would have been set to.

Those are an excellent globe and map by the way, quite something.

Hi Stuart,

If your video time was correct the LCM was roughly 80°. If the video recorded British summer time rather than Universal time then subtracting an hour would give the true LCM  65.6°, which looks pretty close to what I believe I'm seeing on your image.  I think the latter LCM is correct as Solis Lacus (the Eye of Mars) appears on your image as a dark spot on the lower right limb.

I've attached another globe pic with Solis Lacus on the limb as in your image! 

[glowingturnip]

fixed the background:

[Kokatha man]

...your image displays Mare Acidalium on the upper right with the regions from Sinus Meridiani to Solis Lacus on the lower left. (from about 6 o'clock to 9 o'clock)

Astronominsk has a couple of very good interactive Mars globes for you to play with & has nomenclature & of course WinJupos will tell you the visible face of Mars for any time, date & location on Earth: http://www.astronominsk.org/Planets/Planets_en.htm   http://jupos.org/gh/download.htm

Here's WinJupos for your image showing the regions I've listed at a scale & suitable blur for your image for comparison.

[glowingturnip]

quite amazing really.

To be completely honest, when I was processing this, those details were so faint that I wasn't really sure whether it was real features I was bringing out (with HDRMultiscale and MLT in Pixinsight), or whether I was just creating features from nothing by over-processing artifacts.  Seems not.

Maybe it's not such an 'iffy' Mars after all !

Thanks both for your help.