Mars despite bad seeing

Weather predictions did foresee some larger clearings in the sky, unfortunately with high clouds persistent, variable cirrus continuously present.

The seeing was very variable, around 22UT some better fragments came along just in time for Mars. After 22.30UT the sky was closed for business with new clouds arriving.

This image was the best out of a long series. It’s created from a 5-minute run at about 707 FPS, stacked 3% of the frames (212151 frames). Camera: Neptune 664C gain 385 and exposure 1.1529 ms.

A capture area was used in SharpCap of 200×196 pixels at F11 (native focal length C14).

Image finalized with Registax for sharpening, Photoshop for esthetics.

There are – despite the bad seeing – several albedo features visible as indicated above.

One of the more intriguing is the Elysium area. The large circular base of the volcano is visible, and as it appears the centre point also (caldera? ). What’s intriguing is the white patch NE of the volcano. is it snow? or clouds? and why only on that side? Iit is the side closest to the North Pole.

Propontis is much darker in albedo, compared to maps of prior oppositions.

There are some light clouds in the South polar region, and also above western Utopia.

Mars Rotation under variable Seeing with high cirrus clouds