Contains:  Solar system body or event
First Mars attempt, Steve Lantz

First Mars attempt

First Mars attempt, Steve Lantz

First Mars attempt

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Description

The forest fire smoke -- FINALLY, AFTER TWO MONTHS OF GREY AND SMELLY SKIES -- cleared off enough to give me a chance to shoot Mars with my venerable (1980's) Meade 10" f/5.6 Newtonian with a reworked mirror that I finally got set up at our new house. There was a breeze giving me wind shudder problems and the seeing was poor (what a shock for Denver LOL), but at least I got started. North is up and East is to the right. Syrtis Major is rotating out of view, Sinus Meridiani and Sinus Sabaeus are pretty much on the central meridian, with Chryse and Mare Erythraeum rotating into view. I shot 24 useful 15 s videos of about 900 frames each and kept no more than 10 to 20 best images for each video to get a final image for each video. Then I restacked the best 20 of those images. The images were taken on 10/3/2020 from about 10:45 pm to 11:15 pm MST. Next comes RGB filters and de-rotation with winJUPOS. And hopefully a few nights with no wind and good seeing!

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First Mars attempt, Steve Lantz