Mars - 2003 Opposition

Object data: In August 2003 Mars made its closest approach to earth in nearly 60,000 years. In the above image Mars was captured a few days after closest approach, on 5th September 2003. The image was acquired at 23:18 GMT and is centered on the Tyrrhena region, with Cimmeria to the East, and Syrtis Major visible on the Western limb. The southern ice cap is about as small as it gets since this image was taken six days past perihelion during the southern summer. Date: 05/09/03 23:18 GMT Location: Southern France Conditions: Calm, transparency=8, seeing=7 Optics: RCOS Ritchey-Chretien 12.5" at f/18 using 2x focal extender Mount: AP 900 GTO on Portable Pier Camera: Philips ToUcam Pro Webcam Guiding: N/A Exposure: 665 frames at 1/33 sec Processing: Image acquisition with K3CCD. Frame selection and stacking was done using K3CCD with RGB registration and Wavelet processing in Registax. Final curves adjustment was done in Photoshop. Notes: Final image composed of approximately 65 highest quality frames from the original 665