Mars 20/12/22 with iPhone 12

[PeterStudz]

After some inspiration from @Mart29 I decided to dive this a go with my Skywatcher 200p Dob. Why I haven’t tried before I don’t know. I’ve been observing Mars since the summer.

Conditions were far from idea. There was a strong jetstream and I had high cloud rapidly developing. So I only got a quick 12 second video using my iPhone 12 before the clouds rolled in. The eyepiece used is a Starguider 5mm.

All I’ve done is manually select a good frame from the video. Crop and do some really basic editing using the standard iPhone camera app. And I’m sure it would be possible to get better. But the north Polar Hood stands out and at least you can recognise some albedo features.

 

 

Edited December 21, 2022 by PeterStudz

[Mart29]

5 hours ago, PeterStudz said:

After some inspiration from @Mart29 I decided to dive this a go with my Skywatcher 200p Dob. Why I haven’t tried before I don’t know. I’ve been observing Mars since the summer.

Conditions were far from idea. There was a strong jetstream and I had high cloud rapidly developing. So I only got a quick 12 second video using my iPhone 12 before the clouds rolled in. The eyepiece used is a Starguider 5mm.

All I’ve done is manually select a good frame from the video. Crop and do some really basic editing using the standard iPhone camera app. And I’m sure it would be possible to get better. But the north Polar Hood stands out and at least you can recognise some albedo features.

 

 

Amazing photo! Well done mate very pleased for you! Be a while until we get decent views of Mars soon so chuffed you got it 😄

[PeterStudz]

I’ve been busy the last few days. Here’s another frame. I’ve added some red, although Mars looks more yellow in the eyepiece. And I’ve rotated it so that north is up. I’m the short video there’s only about 4 seconds where it’s at its best. 

[PeterStudz]

On 21/12/2022 at 19:55, Mart29 said:

Amazing photo! Well done mate very pleased for you! Be a while until we get decent views of Mars soon so chuffed you got it 😄

Thanks. It’s certainly fun to try and that’s what it’s all about.

I also think that smartphone astronomy pictures should be as quick and as easy as possible. Ideally you want to send as little time fiddling/processing as possible. Ideally none at all. When I worked in IT a large part of my job was spent trying to make the systems we had as intuitive and as simple as possible. Let the computers do the work. Although I’ve left that world I still have that philosophy

[Mart29]

27 minutes ago, PeterStudz said:

Thanks. It’s certainly fun to try and that’s what it’s all about.

I also think that smartphone astronomy pictures should be as quick and as easy as possible. Ideally you want to send as little time fiddling/processing as possible. Ideally none at all. When I worked in IT a large part of my job was spent trying to make the systems we had as intuitive and as simple as possible. Let the computers do the work. Although I’ve left that world I still have that philosophy

Exactly that. I want to spend time at the eyepiece not the pc.