Mars 22nd September 2020

[AbsolutelyN]

Lovely clear night last night here in North Yorkshire, a bit windy at first but settled. Wish I could have continued past 2am but Mars vanishes behind trees. Not certain what the pale area on the left of the planet is. Not sure if it's real or not but certain I could see it on screen at capture so don't think it's a processing artefact. 

250PDS with ZWO 224MC with 3x + 2x barlows

 

Edited September 22, 2020 by AbsolutelyN

[CraigT82]

Thats a great image, really nicely done! Maybe you should ask for a 5x barlow for Christmas?!  I think the light patch at left is cloud/mists, you will probably find they are very evident in the blue channel ( if you split the colour image) and thats a dead giveaway for cloud features.

We are looking through a lot of Martian atmosphere at the limb so only takes a little misty/hazyness there to show up strongly in the image.

[AbsolutelyN]

6 hours ago, CraigT82 said:

Thats a great image, really nicely done! Maybe you should ask for a 5x barlow for Christmas?!  I think the light patch at left is cloud/mists, you will probably find they are very evident in the blue channel ( if you split the colour image) and thats a dead giveaway for cloud features.

We are looking through a lot of Martian atmosphere at the limb so only takes a little misty/hazyness there to show up strongly in the image.

Thanks, I think this is my best effort so far. I star collimated the scope before starting with a 3x barlow so wondering if that helped - though it could just have been the seeing. I can't find a good 5x barlow in stock anywhere otherwise I'd have got one. To be honest I'm surprised doubling the barlows works so well, especially given the 2x is a £20 one and 20 years old and covered in scratches. Just found  a 5x barlow at last!

Edited September 22, 2020 by AbsolutelyN

[si@nite]

A couple of nice images there!