Mars, 25th October 2020, animation and a few other things

[lukebl]

First bit of imaging for a very long time due to the diabolical weather.

I'm wondering if I'm expecting too much from my 8" Ritchey-Chretien. I had hoped that it would give sharper results than, say, my old 10" Newtonian which I very much regret selling. Of all the scopes I've ever owned (which includes 12" LX200 Meades), it gave the sharpest results. Incredible bang for your buck. What do others think?

Anyway, this is a capture with the 8" RC, plus 3x Televue Barlow, ZWO ASI290 Mono Mini and IR, Green and Blue filters. c 30,000 frames for IR, 15,000 each for G and B. 4ms exposures. I had better results with the Newt back in the opposition of 2014 when Mars had a diameter of only around 15 arcs secs, compared with 21 now. Like I said, am I expecting too much of the RC? It seems well collimated now, so I doubt if I can improve on it.

Here is an animation based on 12 x 5000-frame videos captured every 5 minutes with the IR filter, thus showing an hour's rotation. I find an animation is very useful as it can show which details are real and whch might be imaging artifacts. For instance, the series of dark patches around the pole move with the rotation, so are clearly real features.

As a bonus, I used the same setup to capture Saturn, Jupiter and Uranus.

Obviously here in the UK Jupiter and Saturn are lurking in the murk just a few degrees above the horizon so look terrible, but there was a Ganymede shadow transit which you can make out. I also used a long exposure on Uranus and Saturn to capture moons down to about mag 14.5. I hadn't expected the planetary camera plus barlow to be able to go that deep.

Jupiter and Ganymede shadow

Saturn

Saturn's moons (no barlow)

with labels...

Uranus

with labels...

 

[AstroNtinos]

Nice pictures you got here luke. Mars image very nice. Also Saturn is excellent idk why is it shaped like and egg but nevermind. Jupiter with his Galilean Moons also very nice. Is Uranus that big? Mevermind great job.

[callisto]

Great detail in the rotation shot 👍

 

Mark

[geoflewis]

An excellent collection of images there Luke

[Space Cowboy]

Love the Mars animation!