Mars 18 Oct 2022

[geoflewis]

I set up for a session on Jupiter late evening around the time it was transitting, but the seeing was very poor, so whilst I kept banging away, I think they all end up in the trash can. I then waited for Mars to gain some elevation, not expecting much, but as it would be only my 2nd attempt for Mars this apparation and with the new colour camera, I wanted to establish some working capture setting in FireCapture hopefully for better conditions in the coming weeks. I was right about the seeing, with Mars like a boiling tomato about to explode, but whilst I was playing around, I had a brief period around 1:45am-2:00am (BST) when the seeing improved allowing me to capture this image.

It is the best 1000 frames from 75,000 captured during a 6 min SER at 5ms (200fps). Just fairly light wavelets in Registax, as it wouldn't take anything more, then final saturation and levels tweaks in Affinity Photo. I resized to 192dpi for a smoother finish and a larger image for publiaction. It's nothing to right home about, but Mars is still a long way away, displaying a disc of <14 arcsecs, so hopefully better is to come. The dark triangular of Syrtis Major is central with the huge circular impact basin Hellas Plantia towards the south. Blue clouds and ice are also seen at the north pole.

At the time of this capture Mars was at an elevation of 44°, so I kept going for another hour hoping that the seeing would improve again as Mars gained greater altitude, but even with Mars in the mid 50s° elevation, it was not to be. Instead I popped over to the nearby rising waning Moon to take a look at some feature there. If any are worth sharing that will be on a separate thread, but I was cold and tired after 6 hours at the scope, so called it a wrap around 3:45am.

Thanks for looking.

[chiltonstar]

Nice Geoff  I tried as well but gave up because of the ppoor seeing.

Chris

[neil phillips]

Nice capture Geof. looks like we were imaging at the same time. I was out with the CC. Same here Jupiter not great.

[Kon]

Fantastic image. I like the processing , very natural.

[geoflewis]

11 minutes ago, chiltonstar said:

Nice Geoff  I tried as well but gave up because of the ppoor seeing.

Chris

8 minutes ago, neil phillips said:

Nice capture Geof. looks like we were imaging at the same time. I was out with the CC. Same here Jupiter not great.

1 minute ago, Kon said:

Fantastic image. I like the processing , very natural.

Thanks all. Yes, the seeing was poor, so it was good to get something to keep, out of a long challenging session.

 

 

[JeremyS]

Splendid 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

[geoflewis]

12 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

Splendid 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Thanks Jeremy

[iwols]

great image i had the same last night good mars but terrible jupiter

[geoflewis]

1 hour ago, iwols said:

great image i had the same last night good mars but terrible jupiter

Thanks Ian

[orion25]

Brilliant image, Geof. It will only get better!

[geoflewis]

9 hours ago, orion25 said:

Brilliant image, Geof. It will only get better!

Thanks Reggie, I hope so at least I now have some base settings for the camera in FireCapture to get me started each session.

[Space Cowboy]

Very good!

[geoflewis]

22 minutes ago, Space Cowboy said:

Very good!

Thanks Stuart

[Pete Presland]

Superb capture, one of the best i have seen so far this year.

[geoflewis]

11 hours ago, Pete Presland said:

Superb capture, one of the best i have seen so far this year.

Thanks Pete

[CraigT82]

Really nice capture Geof, nicely processed 

[geoflewis]

3 hours ago, CraigT82 said:

Really nice capture Geof, nicely processed 

Thanks Craig