Mars - 11 Nov 2022

[geoflewis]

After my session messing with different sampling on Jupiter and getting my fist Jupiter methane band image, I thought I'd try my luck with Mars. Laying close to the Moon, Mars was shrowded in brightly illuminated haze, but I opted for 3x6min SERs. However, I completed lost Mars to thickening fog during the 3rd SER, so this is a de-rotated stack of the best 10% from the other two.

Xanthe and the polar hood are well seen.

Edited November 12, 2022 by geoflewis

[Kon]

Very nice Mars. Nicely processed.

[geoflewis]

19 minutes ago, Kon said:

Very nice Mars. Nicely processed.

Thanks Kostas, I'm very surprised how it turned out as I almost didn't bother as the sky was so foggy and Mars enveloped in a huge halo from the nearby Moon. So much so that it's thrown the colour readout of the camera off, so I had to manually force the colour with BGGR on one of the videos, when in fact it should be RGGB. The other one was correct. I've never seen that happen previously, it is very weird and I've no idea what happened.

[Kon]

1 hour ago, geoflewis said:

Thanks Kostas, I'm very surprised how it turned out as I almost didn't bother as the sky was so foggy and Mars enveloped in a huge halo from the nearby Moon. So much so that it's thrown the colour readout of the camera off, so I had to manually force the colour with BGGR on one of the videos, when in fact it should be RGGB. The other one was correct. I've never seen that happen previously, it is very weird and I've no idea what happened.

It shows that even under so and so conditions its worth capturing some videos. I ave never seen that on my planets but on and off with my ISS captures (not sure why).

[neil phillips]

2 hours ago, geoflewis said:

After my session messing with different sampling on Jupiter and getting my fist Jupiter methane band image, I thought I'd try my luck with Mars. Laying close to the Moon, Mars was shrowded in brightly illuminated haze, but I opted for 3x6min SERs. However, I completed lost Mars to thickening fog during the 3rd SER, so this is a de-rotated stack of the best 10% from the other two.

Xanthe and the polar hood are well seen.

very nice Geof. Sometimes that haze can calm the seeing. Image is huge is that a resample. Great result

[geoflewis]

Thanks Neil, yes I resized from 96dpi to 192dpi, to smooth a sawtooth limb, which of course makes the image twice the size.

[neil phillips]

28 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

Thanks Neil, yes I resized from 96dpi to 192dpi, to smooth a sawtooth limb, which of course makes the image twice the size.

Its holding quite well. What gain was that? i had similar effect on Astro surface but not Registax. wondered about read noise. Do you normally get that  edge ?

Edited November 13, 2022 by neil phillips

[BGazing]

This is great. That dark thingie in the polar cap is not an artefact (I was wondering when I shot Mars in my 8in), Peach's image shows it in more detail. 

[dweller25]

Excellent @geoflewis 👍

[geoflewis]

7 hours ago, neil phillips said:

Its holding quite well. What gain was that? i had similar effect on Astro surface but not Registax. wondered about read noise. Do you normally get that  edge ?

The sawtooth edge that I’ve been getting on Mars this year is not something I’ve noticed before. However, I’ve always been at a much longer focal length, shooting shorter videos with mono RGB filters, then de-rotating and stacking them in WinJupos, to build the colour image. It may be due to imaging at F11/F12 with 6 min SERs, but I don’t really know; if anything I think it’s the smaller image scale…..🤷‍♂️

[geoflewis]

7 hours ago, BGazing said:

This is great. That dark thingie in the polar cap is not an artefact (I was wondering when I shot Mars in my 8in), Peach's image shows it in more detail. 

Thanks and yes that dark region is real. It looks to me as if it might be the ground, with the lighter blue being cloud above and around the polar hood.

EDIT: I asked Richard McKim, Mars Section Director, BAA, who advised me that the dark area is the north end of Acidalium, seen through the polar hood.

Edited November 13, 2022 by geoflewis
update info from Richard McKim

[geoflewis]

48 minutes ago, dweller25 said:

Excellent @geoflewis 👍

Thanks David

[Space Cowboy]

That's a beauty!

[geoflewis]

5 minutes ago, Space Cowboy said:

That's a beauty!

Thanks Stuart