Mars - a first image of the 2020 apparition (Niall MacNeill)

Contains: Solar system body or event

Mars - a first image of the 2020 apparition

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

I had very good seeing conditions this morning. High overnight temperatures (24C/ 75F) often seem to lead to good seeing in the morning. The planet is still very far away and has an apparent diameter of only 4.8 arc secs, compared to the maximum of something like 22 arc seconds in October. It is also low to the eastern horizon in the morning so we have to look through a lot of atmosphere. Nevertheless considerable detail can be discerned.

I did sequential Red, Green, Blue & IR 642nm BP runs. When you do 3xRGB and 2xIR runs in this way, the RGB and IR images end up with the same timestamp when derotated with WinJUPOS, which is quite nice for comparison purposes. See the mouse over for the IR image. Also note that going back and forth with the mouse over helps to show the tenuous white cloud in the equatorial regions of the colour image.

Notably, the resolution of the RGB image is somewhat better than that for the IR image in this instance…..perhaps the extra dataset?

This view is north up and to the north one can see the large dark albedo areas of the Mare Acidalium and Niliacus Lacus. To the right near the eastern limb Sinus Meridiani is rotating out of view. The large albedo area to the south is Mare Erythraeum and further south blue white cloud can be seen around the south polar region.

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