Syrtis Major

22nd April. QHY5v Planetary Camera, Televue x3 Barlow, Meade 127mm Meade Apo Telescope

 The night of the 22nd of April was absolutely clear. The atmosphere was steady and my telescope, camera and laptop all performed as they should.  Consequently I captured this reasonably sharp image of Mars.

I'm quite pleased with this image, my best photo of Mars by a long way. You can see the diminishing North polar cap (at 12 o' clock). The northern hemisphere is entering the summer season and consequently the carbon dioxide ice at the North Pole is evaporating in the summer sunshine.  The Southern polar cap is evident (at 6 o'clock) probably covered in cloud.  There is a thick cloud (at 3 o'clock) probably over one of  Mars's shield volcanoes.  The greenish triangular albedo feature, rising from the South Pole to the centre of the disc, is named Syrtis Major.  Historically, it was the very first surface feature to be identified on Mars.

Mars sailing through the stars of the constellation Virgo

At the scale of this photograph,  the star 38 virginis is close to being occulted by the planet Mars.  In reality they are not close at all, the star 38 virginis is approximately 105 light years away whilst Mars, our planetary neighbour, is much closer at 92 million kilometres or if you would rather have the distance expressed in light speed units- 5 light minutes and 6 light seconds away. 38 Virginis is an incandescent ball of gas a little hotter and having a luminosity approximately 3 times that of our Sun.  Mars is a cold, rocky, airless world with features we only see through the reflection of sunlight.

(Note: the Earth - Mars distance varies because of the differential speeds at which Earth and Mars move around their respective elliptical orbits and because of the different eccentricity of their orbits. My calculation of the Earth Mars distance is approximate for April 2014)