Mars 06/02/23 iPhone 14 Pro

[PeterStudz]

This has turned out to be a report too. When I take pictures I never know whether to write a report or just stick the images in here with some general details. 

Didn’t intend to be too long outside as I had (still do) an unpleasant chest infection. I started out trying to view Comet ZTF but the moon was washing it out and I could only just make it out in my rather light polluted Southampton sky. I was going to have a look at the moon but decided to first have a quick look at Mars. Of course Mars is getting rather small now so I wasn’t expecting much. However, the seeing was rather good, in fact close to if not the best I’ve had on Mars. I had the magnification up at x300 and things were still surprisingly sharp. So I decided to try my BST StarGuider 3.2mm which up to now had been rather useless - at x375 it’s a bit too much for my Skywatcher 200p Dob - and I was thinking of selling it. And to my pleasant surprise the views were still good. A bit wobbly but not at all fuzzy. I could see Mars in gibbous phase with Syrtis Major, other albedo features and the North Polar Hood quite obvious. At times there was also a hint of a white dot at the South Pole but that wasn’t clear so could have imaged it. If there it didn’t show on the images but then it is a phone camera.

I noticed some high cloud coming in from the SE so thought that I wouldn’t have much longer. To finish off I decided to practice taking some videos of Mars with my relatively new phone but wasn’t expecting much. Interestingly (although it was wobbly) by playing around with the phone settings I could see more in the way of albedo features on the screen in live view than I could visually at the eyepiece. I couldn’t do that with my old iPhone 12. Using the EQ platform allowed me to wait for a window in the seeing before taking a short video. I took five 30 second-ish videos before going back to visual.

High cloud was increasing as well as some mist. At one point this acted like a filter and gave Mars a real red tint. After that I called it a night. This is the result of a single frame taken from one video. And personally I’m pleased with it especially as Mars is getting so small. No stacking although I have been experimenting with an iPhone app that does basic stacking of planets. However, it didn’t work well here.

Southampton back garden, Bortle 7. Skywatcher 200p Dob on a DIY EQ platform. BST StarGuider 3.2mm, basic smartphone adapter, iPhone 14 Pro with video using the stock camera app set to 4K, 60fps. Edited in the stock camera app, Lightroom and Snapseed. First image as seen, second rotated so north is up.