Mars in decent seeing, - Zen Mak Cassegrain at F26

[Barv]

Hi Guys

I actually went out to check collimation after needing to strip down my scope due to an issue with the inbuilt focuser. This was done for the first couple of hours of being out, so I pointed to Mars afterwards. Things looked that bad on the live view, and focusing was extremely difficult, despite the high altitude of Mars at the time. I was frankly amazed that once I started processing the data, a wealth of detail was present. Here is the result

Thanks for looking

Harvey

Edited December 12, 2022 by Barv

[knobby]

That's excellent Barv. And yet another cracking image taken well outside of the conventional wisdom of 5 x pixel size .. you're approx 9 x but an excellent result.

[geoflewis]

That's excellent for the conditions you had, with loads of detail on show.

[Barv]

3 hours ago, knobby said:

That's excellent Barv. And yet another cracking image taken well outside of the conventional wisdom of 5 x pixel size .. you're approx 9 x but an excellent result.

Thanks Knobby. Mars seems to fair better with pushing the focal length over other subjects

Cheers

Harvey

[Barv]

2 hours ago, geoflewis said:

That's excellent for the conditions you had, with loads of detail on show.

Cheers Geof, it surprised me!

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

That is really good. I am hoping to have a go tonight. Fingers crossed

[Grant]

Wowsers! That's incredible detail - that Zen Mak is giving superb results 🙂

 

[Barv]

10 hours ago, michael.h.f.wilkinson said:

That is really good. I am hoping to have a go tonight. Fingers crossed

Thanks Michael, - good luck tonight!

 

[Barv]

9 hours ago, Grant said:

Wowsers! That's incredible detail - that Zen Mak is giving superb results 🙂

 

Cheers Grant, appreciated. The optics are really coming into their own on Mars

[Alkaid]

This image is fantastic.  

I notice from your image (1st one in particular) that the north and south polar caps seem to 'extend' almost right around the planets limb.  I also saw this visually in my scope and didn't understand what I was seeing, I put it down to some glare / dew / frost on the scopes corrector plate.  But your image shows that it wasn't the scope or conditions, that the 'cold spots' of Mars do seem to extend right around the limb.  I have no idea why this is!  if anyone knows, be glad to hear.

 

Thanks for the great image - Steve

[geoflewis]

8 minutes ago, Alkaid said:

This image is fantastic.  

I notice from your image (1st one in particular) that the north and south polar caps seem to 'extend' almost right around the planets limb.  I also saw this visually in my scope and didn't understand what I was seeing, I put it down to some glare / dew / frost on the scopes corrector plate.  But your image shows that it wasn't the scope or conditions, that the 'cold spots' of Mars do seem to extend right around the limb.  I have no idea why this is!  if anyone knows, be glad to hear.

 

Thanks for the great image - Steve

I think it's more likely to be clouds