A nice observing run with Mars, in very good seeing conditions, for the altitude. At 400x the Red planet looked…well…featureless. Except for the South Polar Cap, nothing else was discernible at first. I’ve actually used averted vision in order to start discern some faintly darker markings on the martian disc. I was still not convinced that they were real at the time; only after all the image processing was done back home I could say “Hey, I think I did see something like that…”.
In the IR images however, a lot more is to be seen, especially at this meridian, where Valles Marineris is detectable, the largest canyon in the Solar System.
Nevertheless, the lack of details due to the global storm that is still active on the Red Planet, is something interesting in its own. Hope to have better seeing (if possible) for when the storm will eventually subside.
A one hour animation, showing the Red Planet rotating.
maximus photography 