Mars close up

This is a heavily processed stack of 10 exposures made using an off-

the-shelf digital camera and a moderately priced telescope. Exposure

time was 1/90th sec and the apature was set to f2.8. This is the only

planet in the Solar System that has surface features that are visible

in amature equipment. All other planets are either too small / dim or

are covered in cloud. If you haven't done so already - go outside and

take a look at Mars - it won't be close to this bright for about

another 30 years.

do you have specs of the telescope?

10" (diameter) f4 Schmidt-Newtonian reflector. The eyepiece used was a 26mm Plossl.

I didn't think you could rate a photo 1 or 2 without leaving a comment. So where are all the comments from the people who rated this so poorly ? Come on ... I practically sweated blood taking this picture, so perhaps you could tell me why it *SUCKS* so much ?

thanks... sounds like a meade lxd55 or something similar... pretty fast thing...

the forced commenting was changed, because it produced so many unnecessary comments... people who don't want comment just say something stupid instead...

in this case the problem is that a) most people don't read what this is about, b) can't judge the work involved, given the equipment, and c) what they see is an unsharp blob with ugly colors, when everyone knows how pretty mars can look on a double page of national geographic ; )

and even i (doing photo experiments with my telescope myself) don't know how to rate this picture with standard terms of photography...

Yes it is a pity that people can give low or high ratings without comments. But you find too many who are not serious abot photo.net unfortunately. Check for new photos and you see 10 % or more which shall stay in the drawer.

I agree with you for this picture you just got too many too low ratings without comments! Ashame on you guys who did this!

Thanks Klemens (I'm NOT calling you "carrier of wounds" ;-) ) and Bob. I didn't expect to get high ratings for aesthetics for this since it is - after all - just a boring fuzzy blob compared to most of the pictures here. But having had fairly intelligent responses to other, more "conventional" pictures I've posted here, I was supprised at the more-or-less unanimous condemnation !!

 

Klemens - you a are absolutely right, the 'scope IS a Meade LXD55 SN10". Are you an astronomer yourself ? This is a new 'scope for me - I got fed up with the views from a Celestron C90 (90mm,f11) and the on-going Mars opposition was the catalyst for me to go out an get one these monsters. Well worth the money - as you can see!

i'm not a real astronomer, just curious about the universe ; )

i got a 90mm meade etx, which is quite compact and nice for viewing (also terrestrial) but pretty slow (f13,8) for photography...

Hello Wayne,

 

I was just reading the fact Mars would be very clear to spot in August. 27 august would be the best day to catch mars and the moon together on one pic (somewhere around midnight). Although I know nothing about astronomics and it sounds strange to me to have moon and mars visible together (I believe what they are writting on the internet)I can't wait to see it with my own eyes. I'm so surprised to find already a pic of Mars on photonet that i'm almost speechless. I'm planning to catch that moon-mars image on 27 august (got no idea how to do it so some tips are welcome) and hope that some others will do the same (next time mars will be so close to earth wil be in 2227). I also invite the many very bad flower and sunset photographers here on photonet to give it a try, maybe after that they will rate your great pic, with nice valuable information a little higher than the loads of badly exposed and composed but highly rated butt, flower and sunset pix I see on photonet everyday . It's hard to rate this kind of pic if you only can rate aesthetics and originlity, this is an informative document and technically difficult to make photograph (without sophisticated equipement), so this isn't a 7/7 pic, but I'm going to rate it 7/7 just to show the low rating people how wrong they are. VERY GOOD JOB and hope to see more mars pix from you, especially on august 27! Best regards, Geert

Hi Geert. Yes - you are right that August 27 is the best night to look at Mars. It will be at it's closest then. However, there will not be a full Moon (this is a good thing). In fact, the Moon will be "new" - it will have it's shadow side to us an will be near the Sun (so opposite Mars on the 27th).

 

Do not wait until the 27th though !! Go out TONIGHT!! or any night over the next few weeks. Mars is not changing in size much over the next week or two - but then it will start to get smaller and smaller as we travel away from it.

 

You can still see the Moon near Mars about 2 weeks after August 27 - as it was about a week ago, and about a month before that - as the Moon travels around the Earth, it will pass Mars in the sky.

I've looked through scopes and know something about how hard it is to get anything less than total blur on a planet. Looking thru our atmosphere is like looking at the world from inside a fish bowl. This is a remarkable level of detail for this object. I have a Cave 8" f/8 and a Celestron 8" f/10. Nice work.

Thanks Kent !! And thanks for the e-mails too.

GREAT JOB! I like it a lot... but IMO you can do better the final result, not in the photo side, but in the "design" side. Change the lines so they don't look as hand-made. Redistribute the "names" and change to a better rendered font.

 

 

Terrific Work !!

 

Wayne, I don't think there are very many amateur astronomers on photo.net. Pity...