Less dust?

[chiltonstar]

Looking at Mars last night, I got the distinct impression that details were clearer than they have been recently, so I popped my AS1224 camera onto the scope (Mak 180) for a couple of quick AVIs. The seeing was excellent considering the low altitude of Mars and the fact that it was nearly touching my neighbour's roof! No IR channel used. Orientation is conventional compass, ie N up, W at 270 degrees.

Chris

 

[orion25]

Nice image! The dust is subsiding! Hooray!

Reggie

[Knighty2112]

Hi Chris. Nice image. Well done. I was observing Mars last night visually in my small Altair Astro Lightwave 66ED-R with a 2x Barlow and an ED 5mm EP and could just make out slight features with the naked eye, which match up pretty close to what you imaged, so hoping the dust is settling down now. 

[John]

Thats a good image Chris

Imaging seems to cut through the dust better than visual observing I feel. Last night through my Vixen ED102SS I could see hints of the dark areas your image shows but the contrast between them and the brighter areas was less obvious. The pale N cap was more obvious and I thought I saw a small white cap at the S pole too.

Things are slowing improving, which is positive.

With the dust storm and the low altitude of the planet, it has been a challenging opposition for UK observers, despite the large apparent size of the disk.

[chiltonstar]

John: I could see what I thought was a lighter zone at the S Pole, but when I rgb aligned the image, it disappeared so I suppose what I could see might have been AD which was fairly evident visually.

Gus: This is the SkySafari simulation for Mars at the time I observed, flipped to match mak-view.

Chris

 

[Rob]

Though back home I'm going to have another go at Mars tonight with the ED70!. I cant see any planets from the new garden due to being surrounded by trees!. I need to wonder across the close and setup outside a neighbors house to see them over the trees.

I want to take the big 127L out, but need a trip to the forest for that!.. does not look like I'm trying to bazooka the houses then!

The ED70 did well from Cricklade on the 25th.. Mars was not so bright then either 12 to 2am. Just hoping it will do well now its near twice as bright!

Rob

[chiltonstar]

1 hour ago, orion25 said:

Nice image! The dust is subsiding! Hooray!

Reggie

I can make it subside even more with my dust filter.....

Chris

[orion25]

2 hours ago, chiltonstar said:

I can make it subside even more with my dust filter.....

Chris

Wow! Dust buster!  

[Pete Presland]

Very nicely captured.