Mars again

[StevenSWissler]

Taken on Feb 17th

10" LX200ACF, 2x barlow, DSI II Color

Captured and processed with Nebulosity and Gimp
Stack of best 3 of series of 100 .01 second exposures.

Seeing was not great, only a few of the exposures were not blurred...

[vomit]

Very nice.  I am doing a visual on Mars right now, and it looks pretty good....can even (barely) see the polar cap.

Good stuff!

[vomit]

Hey I just wanted to ask if there is a resource on the 'net that shows what "face" Mars is showing to Earth at any given time?  I know about S & T's site, but wanted to know if there was anything "out there" that would show what is going on at any given time, with a realistic view?  It looks to be somewhat gibbuous tonight.  Thanks!

[StevenSWissler]

Vomit, thanks for the comment. Wish I had more clear nights here in LA, I'm not aware of any net resources, 'll check at work on Monday (JPL).

There are planetarium programs like Starry Night which should do this. Celestia could possibly be used as well ( and it's free ).

[StevenSWissler]

It looks like Starry Night shows what Mars looks like at any given time. Next clear night I'll see if it's accurate. There's a free open source planetarium program called stellarium which looks promising. It's a bit buggy on my wife's Vista laptop and it crashed on my xp laptop. Celestia ( another open source free tool ) shows the same "view" of Mars that Starry Night and stellarium shows. Celestia is not a planetarium program, however you can see what Mars will look like from Earth by centering Earth, then zooming to mars.

[StevenSWissler]

Here's a Celestia image capture for the same time as the mars picture I took on Feb 16th

[vomit]

Here's a Celestia image capture for the same time as the mars picture I took on Feb 16th

Very cool indeed.  Do you image from LA proper or one of the suburbs?  I live in Upper Michigan in a small town, so truly dark skies are never too far away......but our weather oftentimes leaves a lot to be desired.  Thanks for the input.

[StevenSWissler]

I live North of Los Angeles, in Sierra Madre, which is up against the San Gabriel mountains. I can get to dark skys in about an hour and a half. Observing from my yard is not too bad, seeing can be pretty good, so it's not bad for looking at the moon and planets.

[Tony]

Nice shot of Mars... it has proven to be an elusive target for me... I live near the Rose Bowl in light pollution central, and found an IDAS light pollution filter works well on DSO's. took this the other night of NGC3718 and NGC3729 from my yard.