Hi all,
I tried last week to capture a fairly close approach between Mars and Saturn at dawn using a 6SE and a focal reducer, but without success due to circumstances beyond my control, aka incompetence.
Undeterred, I spent yesterday evening fettling up the C14, collimating it etc, and went out at 430 this morning to have a go at the two as separate targets. I used a 678MC and ADC but no Barlow (pixel size in the 678 is 2 microns). Both planets were close to the treeline at around 30 deg.
In the images below, Saturn's rings are now getting to be edge on. Not much surface detail is visible and the colours seemed washed out, perhaps due to the altitude. This will improve later in the year, for us in SE Australia..
Mars is still tiny at 4.6 arcsecs but the coming opposition is aphelic and so it will not get much bigger - about 14 arcsecs, and for us in SE Australia it will remain fairly low throughout the approach. As Christophe Pellier pointed out elsewhere, however, the aphelic oppositions are interesting in that there is a chance to image white clouds on Mars.
In the image below you can make out a bright SPC, with a slight notch in it at Long 350, lat 67S, perhaps signs of break up as the southern summer solstice approaches.
Also, for a bit of fun, I did a photocomposite of the two planets to the same scale as they are in the eyepiece, oriented as they currently are in the southern dawn sky, as a slight compensation to myself for the missed conjunction of last week.
Thanks for looking
Mark
