Mars: February 6, 2010

After a winter full of clouds and even more clouds, last Saturday night was a clear enough one to do some astronomy. Mars was waiting us there in their oposition (although not one of its bests) and so we could miss the chance to take some photos of it.

In this occasion we have slightly change our usual observation site in La Azotea (in the middle of Granada city) to a quite near village, Armilla.

We prepared the Eq6 mount and the "bidon" (an 255 newton Skywatcher), we aligned it and we used the webcam with a 3x barlow lens. As the results were quite poor in sizem we added a new 2x barlow, obtaining a f ratio greater than 28.

We took several 1 minute length videos and from the beginning we stated that seeing was not bad a t all that night. We had the typical turbulences from a suburbs location, but the images of Mars were static enough and with enough detail.

We also tried to take some photos from M81 and M82, but humidity and tiredness make us fail.

After the typical problems with the processing (we are still quite amateur in this field) we show our first Mars photograph. We hope it will be the beginning of a series. Among the visible structures in the photograph, we can cite Sinus Meridiani, Syrtis Major Planitia, Acidalia Planitia, Hellas (in the oposite part from the frozen pole), Isidis planitia and Sinus Sabaeus.