Saturn and Mars

Hi,
Wasnt it freezing last night, there was ice all over the place :lol:
Anyway, I wasnt able to stay up late last night but I did go out observing for a small while earlier in the night.
While there I got a pic of saturn and mars, saturn was very low in the sky so its alot blurrier then it would have been at 3am, mars is a distant shadow of its former self.

www.irishastronomy.org/user_resources/fi...-sat_mar1%20copy.jpg

Both were taken with the 12" sct and a toucam, 600 frames for mars and 1800 frames for saturn.
These are both to scale and represent full frames (uncropped) of the toucam with a 3x barlow.
Note with saturn that the shadow of the disk on the rings is gone compared to late last year.
You can just make out the polar cap on mars and some smudgy detail, its pretty much all I could see with an eyepiece, saturn was actually better through the eyepiece.
Well, lets hope its clear again tonight.

I'm surprised at how good your Mars image is Dave. Very good considering how far past opposition it is.

Really nice colours in Saturn there Dave!

Michael,
When I took the picture of Mars, it was much higher in the sky compared to saturn so itdoesnt look as fuzzed, mars is only 8 arcseconds in size, it looked tiny without the barlow and seemed almost like a star in the skylux.. When it gets that small, I think this is really the realm of 4"+ apo refractors, the seeing captued with a 12" scope doesnt help with such a small image.

Now that I'm looking at it again, I'm not happy at all with Saturn, I might give it another try tonight, much later in the evening maybe.

Saturn is of good quality to me! even though it was low down in all the cold murk. Is'nt Mars getting really small, it's amazing at how quickly it diminishes in size :roll:

Keith..