Tuesday, October 04, 2005

First look on Mars in 2005

This morning around 5:30am, I had the first look on Mars in 2005.

Mars was very high in the sky, barely ok with my Ranger, not EQ mounted but with the tripod pushed against the window and using the 410 head. The 410 head still works very well.

I used my Ranger since C8 was not useable at that viewing angle. With my 20mm widescan, the field was filled with stars, missed that feeling for long. Panning around with that slow motion control was nice, very enjoyable experience.

With the 20mm, and even the 13mm Nagler, the image was dead small and super bright, enough to wash out any detail... chromatic abberation is very very obvious.

Adding the 5x barlows revealed the detail inside, chromatic abberation is not much worsen, and I could see it's the "X" side of the Mars, polar ice cap was briefly detected, also those hazy atmosphere around the limb.

Everything was done within around 20 minutes, since no imaging can be done, packed up very quickly, missed this feeling for long.

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