The Dutch Observatory

Last night was the last oportunity again for a few days to image Mars.  The conditions we a little better than Friday with the seeing going to maybe 4/10.  I experienced still some wind gusts, but the planes from Atlanta were gone. (Thanks Stephen, I know you were not working ).  The “boring” side of Mars again, but some nice clouds or dust streaks are visible.  A nice cloud visible over Amazonis almost on the CM, and clouds extending North of Olympis Mons and Pavonis Lacus.  A nice streak extends just south of the NPC.

The weather has been very bad again for almost a week.  Yesterday I tried to image Mars and made 4 runs but the result were pretty bad, so I did not post them.  The same as I did last week twice.  Today the conditions were a little better although I did not think seeing came above 2/10 because of occasional winds, the jetstream, and my buddy Stephen Ramsden kept sending those planes departing Atlanta over my house, in fact it looked like he wanted to position them in the middle  between Mars and Pollux and he was pretty good at that.   The result was that all of the runs were impacted at least in one color by a vortex created by those planes.  Anyway, the seeing was not good anyway, so I forgive Stephen.  Here Mars on the 27th February around 2:13 UT

Finally!!   We had some “fantastic” seeing today compared to the conditions of the last many months.  I can’t remember any more when it was this nice.  The 150+ mile/hour winds of the jetstream above had moved around Atlanta and except for an occasional blurp, the image was steady.  With these conditions I had to try out an old barlow, a 3x Klee which let me image at f 38.  Something I have never done before, and which would have made some bad images in the very unstable conditions we’ve had.  The image shows clouds in Elysium, clouds at the morning limb and a streak of clouds south of the NPC.

I just imaged a nice Iridium Flare.  Iridium 14 reflected the sun with its right antenna with a brightness of -7.4 and the center line was only 600 meters from my home!  What a treat!   In addition, it passed by in Monoceros very close to Orion, so I decided to make the shot wider so I would get Orion, Sirius and Procyon in the same view.  I hope you like the image as much as I do.

It’s been a long time since we had half way decent conditions.  Tonight’s transparency was a little over average, but seeing was still low because if high winds.  Here my image of Mars from today. Clouds visible over Utopia, Arabia and at the evening limb. 

We had some “clear” skies after yesterday’s rain, but the next front was moving in fast. I managed to get a few images while some thin layers of clouds passed through. Seeing was fair but very humid and freezing. After three runs, my corrector plate started to freeze over and I had to stop before the clouds moved in again.  For this image I replaced the Celestron Shorty plus barlow with the cell of the Meade 140 2x barlow with an 4″ extention.

Yesterday I also ran some imaging tests.  I should have done this a lot earlier, but better late than never .  I used the Williams Optics which I have used a lot lately and replaced the Celestron Shorty which produces pretty weak images with the Meade 140 2x.   I used this barlow almost 2 years ago to run some tests on Jupiter and I was pleased with the results.  However, the tests than were made with a borrowed barlow and I was not able to find one to purchase.  I now have acquired one and shown are some test results.  The 4 images are made with the CPC925 on a wedge, the DMK21AU04.AS and the Meade 140 2x barlow and the WO 2x barlow on extention rings of variable lenght as noted.  It shows that not only this is a good barlow for me for Jupiter as in last year’s tests, but also for Mars.

Mars, the evening before opposition.  It does not look like the conditions will allow to image tomorrow when Mars is at opposition, so here is Mars one day before.  The conditions were variable with high clouds passing through as well as an  occasional Con-trail from the planes leaving Atlanta airport.  The CM is almost the same as yesterday and the images have been made again with the Meade 140 with some extra rings added.  As always, click the thumbnail for the larger image.

Today Mars is at his closest approach to Earth, just 62 million miles away!  In two days, Mars will be at opposition to earth, which means the sun is exactly opposite of Mars.  It was not too cold outside so I also decided to make an animation of one hour rotation, and captured an image every 10 minutes for one hour.  Clouds are seen over Tempe, Arcadia and Ganges/Candor and Olympus Mons and the morning limb.  Click the thumbnail for the animation to start.  These images have been made using a Meade 140 2x barlow on extention rings and I believe it does a lot better than the Celestron Shorty plus.

Last night the seeing and transparency was probably the best this winter so far and well above average, until clouds started moving in shortly after midnight.  A nice cloud over Elisia Mons and a wide cloud band streches from Mere Insula over the north tip of Syrtis Major, over Isidis Regio and way beyond Hesperia.