Mars from Finland 16th Oct 2020

[AstroFin]

Hi everyone,

Thought it would be nice to share an animation of Mars I made after last night's imaging session. 🙂 The video was captured during a 4 hour time period. From my location (61 degrees North), the max altitude of Mars is around 33 degrees. The temperature was around -1 Celsius and the seeing conditions were, surprisingly, pretty good. In the beginning you can see Valles Marineris moving to the shadow and if you pay attention, Olympus Mons should also be visible near the end of the video.

The scope used was Celestron CPC 800 and the camera ZWO ASI 120 MC-S. Initially I tried imaging with a Barlow but found that the native 2000mm focal length gave the "cleanest" results.

Clear Skies,

Tomi

 

Edited October 17, 2020 by AstroFin

[callisto]

Love it 👍

 

Mark

[AstroFin]

Thanks Mark! 🙂

[dweller25]

Great animation 🏆

[AstroFin]

Thank you David! I have to admit that the field rotation caused by my alt-az mount did give me a little headache. Luckily the number of frames used for the video was not too high so I was able to just manually derotate them.  

[jock1958]

That’s excellent. Yep I can see the elusive Olympus Mons in a few of your frames, something I’ve failed to do as a visual observer!

Edited October 18, 2020 by jock1958

[AstroFin]

Glad I'm not the only one who sees it!   You're right, it is quite difficult to see visually, I've never seen it either. Not sure if it's even possible with an 8 inch scope? Perhaps under the most perfect seeing conditions...?