I was able to observe Mars this week end – after weeks and weeks of cloudy sky and rain. The seeing (between 4/10 and 5/10 on ALPO scale) was not as great as in November but I am still very pleased with the result I got in average seeing condition with my Orion Maksutov-Cassegrain 7″ – a mass production telescope I bought for less than $1,200 – and with my black and white Imaging source DMK camera.
Apparent diameter: 13.4″
Mars on 2/14/2010 at 00.43 AM PST – RGB Composite
I used registax 5 to combine about 2,000 rgb frames, and the following software : Photoshop CS4, Focus magic, and sharpener pro 3.0.
I used a x2.5 Siebert optics barlow – and the picture was taken at focal plane at approximatively f/d 40.
Calsky.com rendition of Mars for same date / time is on the right.
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Mars – 02/13/2010 at 22.33 PST – RGB Composite
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Rendition of Mars on CalSky.com for the same date and time.
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Red Channel Green Channel Blue Channel
