Mars - Oposition 2012

Winter is slowly fading away and rising night temperatures allow for some astroimaging, since neighbors do not light up their fireplaces so often.
Yesterday evening was one of such nights.
Yes! I loved it!

Mars - January 28, 2012

Mars is getting closer and closer...
Winter time is a great season for astronomy, with those long nights and freezing temperatures, or is it? Well, not quite so, especially if you live right downtown and surrounded by those cosy fireplaces' chimneys... Even at 2 a.m. it still warms up the air and warps anything you point at...

Mars, Feb, 1st, 2010 f/30

Before seeing deteriorated, I was able to snap this Mars.
Stack of some 800 frames per R&G channel and 600 B.
C11 @f/30
Registax 5 & CS4.
Seeing 5/10.

JC/2010

Mars, Feb, 1st, 2010

Seeing has gotten a little better and allowed for a couple of tries at f/30.

First off, I didn't push hard to f/30 but rather to f/20.
It looked promising and seeing was quite nice for my local standards - 6 story roof top building, with scattered fireplace chimneys, though none was burning at the time.
I got the following picture, a stack of some 1000 frames per channel, in Registax and CS4.

Since it looked so nice, I tweaked collimation and pushed up to f/30. Boy, I could see fine detail on the R channel image on the laptop screen. I was glad that it was worth the waiting... only to become evident that seeing was only getting worse...
This is the best I was able to get, just some 50 minutes later...
C11 @f/30, DMK21AF, RGB Astronomik IIb
Registax & CS4.

Got to keep waiting for better skies...
JC/2010