Mars on Tues Feb 9
by Vern on Feb.10, 2010, under Astronomy, Planetary
Here are a couple images of Mars from last night just before midnight. Mars central meridian was about 40 degrees longitude. Mare Acidalium is the dark region below the northern polar cap. Solis Locus is in view to the lower left below center. Sinus Meridiani toward lower right. Disk is 13.7 arc sec across.
Clear sky, transparency was great; turbulence about 5/10, temperature 17 deg F., no wind, location my backyard – Louisville.
Equipment used: Celestron Nexstar 11 telescope, Televue 2.5X Powermate, DMK 21AU04.AS video camera, and LRGB filters. Camera set to 30 fps, 1/30 sec exposure, gain adjusted so histogram max was 90% of full scale for each filter. Aligned and stacked with Registax5, Photoshop used to align channels, enhance, and resize.
