The Dutch Observatory

Adding another day to our streak of nice days.  November 6th I made a series of 3 images of which I am posting the RGB and individual filtered images. 

The clear Skies continued, but the seeing was not good, with winds picking up, making Mars jump all over the chip.  Here the only presentable image from this morning. 

The forecast was clear for early this morning and the rest of the day, but clouds have moved in.  However, it left me an opportunity earlier this morning to capture Mars. (Now an hour earlier since we switched to daylight savings time yesterday).  Here Mars and Syrtis Major, with Hellas very bright above it and the polar cap visible below it.   Deucallonis Regio shows up bright also above the dark Sinus Sabeaus to the right of Syrtis Major.  I am not sure if the dark area below Syrtis Major is Boreo Syrtis.

The forecast showed better conditions for 5:00 A.M.  So I set my alarm clock for 4:30.  It was clear, but the humidity was 90% and it kept me going to keep the corrector plate from dewing over.  Once I setup,  I thought I had problems with my Celestron barlow lens, but when positioned in front of  the filter wheel, the magnification was too big and I did not get enough light to get decent exposures, so the the barlow went back behind the filter wheel again.  Here my Mars image from this morning.  The clouds moved in before I knew it and I could not even complete the blue AVI of the second set.  Here Mars with Syrtis Major at the CM on the evening limb.

I’ve been imaging Mars earlier this week, but had problems processing them.  Here an image from this morning when the seeing was pretty good.  However I could hardly keep the dew off my corrector plate.  Here Mars as it becomes more active.

Two images of Mars from this morning.  Both Transparency and Seeing were great this morning.  Temperature was around 57 degrees and the humidity was 87%.  I captured these images with a gamma setting of 73 which I believe ends up in a better contrast.

The streak in better seeing continued for another day, so I took the opportunity to make another image from Mars.  Very humid this morning, but enough to capture this image without dewing over of the scope.  Philegra just visible on the left and Aetheria almost at the CM with Elysium in between, while Syrtis Major rises at the following limb.

To use the change in weather, I had to do Mars this morning.  Jupiter did not work out last night but this morning the seeing was good, but the humidity really was high.  I barely made it for one image before I started noticing a drop in luminace in the capture program as my primary started to show signs of condensation.  The 12 Volt hair dryer did wonders!  Here the image from this morning.  Aetheria visible on the evening limb, Syrtus Major extending on the right to the equator on the right half of the image and Nodus Alcyonius noticeable in between.

I had planned on imaging Jupiter last night, but as I woke up at 1:00am, Jupiter was already behind the trees in front of my house, so I decided to give Mars a try at 5:00 am. 

Yes, this is my first image of Mars for the 2009/2010 apparation, and not the hair dryer which was in front of the corrector plate a lot longer than Mars was.  The dewing was very bad, however I had just enough time to get a complete set of AVIs to create this one image.

Syrtis Major can be seen at the following limb as well as Hellas and the northern polar cap is very visible, especially in the blue image.

Mars in 2007

Some images made in 2007 from Mars.  These images represent my learning curve with astro imaging and the Philips SPC900NC webcam.

This image is my first image of Mars and the SPC900NC.  It was made early in the morning around 9:36 UT from Social Circle.  For details about the capture and processing see the image.

During the end of October and November I was pretty busy with Comet 17P/Holmes.  In the beginning of December I put some effort back on Mars.  Here an image taken on December 9, 2007.

Mars on the evening of December 10, 2007.  The planet now is grown to a size of 15.7 arc seconds and almost 99% of the surface is visible.  Only a few weeks until apparation and opposition.

 Mars on December 12th.

This was Mars at apparation.  Unfortunately the seeing was not good, but at least I was able to get an image from this event.  The size of Mars has grown to 15.88 arc seconds and the phase is now at 100%.