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2005 Mars opposition After a more than two year 'absence' and a few errant forwarded emails claiming a sight no one alive today "WILL EVER SEE AGAIN", Mars returned in late October and early November to give us one last close look until 2018. Compared to the 2003 opposition, the close approach this time was about 43 million miles. While the angular size presented was smaller, 20 arc seconds or so, compared to 2003's 25 arc seconds, the path the red planet took across the sky was much higher than two years ago. This position meant a more favorable location for earthbound observers in the northern hemisphere. Whereas, the southern hemisphere had the best seats in 2003. As Mars approached, its seasonal change
brought summer to the martian southern hemisphere. Because of this factor,
astronomers and backyard sky watchers around the Earth were on the look out for
the possible development of dust storms that are triggered by the increased
amount of solar warming.
The images above were captured before Mars made its closest approach to Earth on October 29th. The martian day is just 23 hours long. So, the faces in the two images are a bit different. For example, the dark pointed feature to the upper left of center in the October 22nd image is obscured by the arc at the center of the October 25th image. The dust appears as a mustard or yellow
color. A prominent polar hood is visible at the north pole. The south polar cap
is nearly sublimated with only a small patch remaining visible. The martian
plains are seen as an ochre or light orange color. It is interesting to notice how the dust clouds changed over the course of a 3-day period. 2003 Mars opposition Public interest in this planetary neighbor reached a fevered pitch during the summer of 2003. The "red planet" normally at an average distance of about 140 million miles, approached to within 35 million miles by August 27th. It seemed like a good time to learn and experiment with planetary imaging techniques. Scroll down the page and see the progression of quality in the images. *~*~My first Attempt~*~*
*~*~Chaco Canyon~*~*
Captured with K3CCD Tools and Processed in Registax 2 and Photoshop 7.0 *~*~Ft. Davis~*~*
My best one, yet! The large orange region in the top half is home to some of the most interesting features on the surface of Mars. The Tharsis volcanoes, including Olympus Mons are found here. Olympus Mons is the tallest volcano in the Solar System. It is over 3 times higher than Mt Everest and its total footprint covers nearly as many square miles as the State of Arizona. Also in this region is Valles Marineris. A giant canyon as long as the United States is wide and 6 to 7 times deeper than the Grand Canyon. While it is extremely difficult to observe either Olympus Mons or Valles Marineris visually, even during a favorable opposition such as this one, I was able to visually detect the dappled circular features seen in the upper half of this image. This image confirms what I logged at the eyepiece at about 12:45AM MDT on August 27th through my Takahashi FS-102 using a 3-6mm Nagler Zoom eyepiece at about 164x. The dark circular feature right of center is Solis Lacus (The Lake of the Sun) also known as the "eye of Mars". For this image, I had my 14.5" StarMaster truss tube telescope on a Johnsonian V equatorial platform. This arrangement allowed me to track Mars while the Phillips ToUcam webcam worked at 15 frames per second in K3CCD Tools. I selected about 200 of the best frames from approximately 600 for this image. Then I used Registax 2 and Photoshop 7 for the final processing.
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peter@astronomyadventures.com
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