Mars as it gets closer

Thanks Charles and Michael,
Lets just hope we get a few clear gaps over the next week or so,

Dave,

Two very nice images, especially considering the conditions recently.

I did look at Mars on the past two nights but the distorsion from the wind and air turbulence, (as well as the risk of the telescope blowing over) would have made imaging impossible for me. The image was wobbeling nearly its full diameter due to the turbulence alone. I did try sketching but gave up after an hour.

This makes your image all the more remarkable.

Tonight maybe?

Michael Scully

Tonight indeed Michael,!
There seems to be little wind tonight but alot of hazy cloud, I only got the images above as the dome blocks alot of the wind but when you're facing into it, you loose abit of the benifit.
I had to take off the dew shield as it was catching the wind alot, my image was also all over the screen at times.
I was capturing individual bmps so I was turning on and off the capture in astrosnap between the clouds, every 20 seconds or so. :lol:

Well I did get out but the seeing was not good while Mars was low in the sky. I did get to fill the portable's harddisk with AVIs though.
So I went in to clear some space. I have not looked at all of the videos yet but they do not look great

Here is the result of 448 frames out of 2200.


www.irishastronomy.org/user_resources/fi...-mars251005_2307.jpg
Image was taken around 23:07 BST so the CM is around 209 degrees.

Having transferred the files I returned to find that it had rained! Just as well that I had brought in all the eyepieces. I have been caught like that before.
Michael Scully