The Opposition of Mars 2003 - The Red Planet never so close!

The Opposition of Mars 2004 is history. It was characterized by pretty stable weather, good for many observations at the Bismarck Observatory. In 2003, like about every two years, Earth outrunned Mars on its inner orbit around the sun. This time the distance between us and the desert planet was 56 million kilometres. Thus Mars was examined intensively with my telescopes in summer 2003, off course especially from the good old Bismarck. Fortunately the feared global duststorm failed to appear, not like since the last opposition two years before. The gallery of my Mars exposures is now complete. For comparison one can find at the end of this page an impressive example from the last opposition season 2001. All images on this page were taken through the 13 inch Bismarck telescope with aid of a camcorder. All exposures here weren't even done with the same optics but above all with identical zoom adjustments of the camera. So Mars' increasing and decreasing at the end of the year was clearly documented. One more hint: All images on this page are corresponding to the view in the telescope. This means: south is upper right!

This gallery is although admirable in an extra window .

You can get more informations about picture editing of my Mars exposures and links about this issue beneath !

October 25th 2003:

Oktober 17th 2003:

September 30th 2003:

The last image of this observation period was done under poor conditions with bad seeing and vignetting. Beside the polar cap Solis Lacus is just detectable. Now the greater distance to Mars is obvious. South of Mare Cimmerium the melted polar cap uncovered further details. After longer time Syrtis Major and Sinus Meridanii are again in common observable. The seeing was pretty poor.

September 21st 2003:

September 18th 2003:

September 02nd 2003:

Today Solis Lacus and Chryse Planitia are at the planets meridian. This image was taken under poor conditions. (vignetting caused by the forest) and poor seeing. During this evening Solis Lacus and Tharsis highlands dominated the view. Mare Sirenum in the west and Aurorea Sinus in the east. Mars at maximum: Mare Cimmerium in center. Polar cap is now pretty small, ice clouds at the western limb!

August 25th 2003:

August 21th 2003:

August 16th 2003:

Opposition is almost reached: Impressive display of Sinus Meridanii, following in the east Syrtis Major. Now the region between Solis Lacus and Sinus Meridanii is completely visible. Chryse and Aurorae Sinus at the center. One of the best pictures by now: Gorgeous details around Solis Lacus and westbound. Many fine structures displaying around Chryse Planitia.

August 12th 2003:

August 07th 2003:

August 04th 2003:

A structured south polar cap and Solis Lacus at western horizont shows this image done by medium seeing. Today ice clouds near the northern polar region were visible! Mare Siremun is now close to the center. During this week Tharsis highlands, Mare Cimmerium and Mare Siremun dominated the view at the Mars globe.

July 30th 2003:

July 24th 2003:

July 20th 2003:

Mars reaches now a diameter of more 20 arcseconds. This morning the impressive regions between Syrtis Major und Sinus Meridanii displayed. For the first time signs of decomposition at the southern polar cap are visible. The polar cap is melting!

June 22nd 2003:

June 03rd 2003:

June 2001:

This morning surprised with pretty good seeing so the 15 arcseconds measuring planet showed yet impressive details. At June 03rd Mars measured about 12 arcseconds in diameter. Details of its surface are already visible. This picture, taken with Bismarck during the last opposition 2001 from an added videosequence, serves as a good comparison.

At some images the seeing was partially about 1". Especially the rows in September and August are taken at mostly good conditions close to the culmination. Mars stood at ca 30 degrees elevation. In June Mars reached until dawn only elevations about 20 degrees above horizon. 2001 the planet reached not more than 18 degrees. Instead of this fact the quality of this image is pretty good. During his opposition at the end of August the Red Planet reached his maximum diameter of 25 arcseconds. The prey is pretty impressive. At the end of September the diameter was still about 20 arcseconds, enough to produce sharp images. Finally in October the apparent diameter and also the observation conditions went worse. Daily earlier culmination was responsible for disappearing of Mars behind the woods bordering the Bismarck Observatory horizon.

All these images of Mars were edited with following method: Out of the videoclip the best images have been assembled with a movie editing program. Happily spin-off products of this procedure are optimized clips, good for use in further videoprojects. The single frames of these clips have been added and sharpened with the freeware Registax.

Here you can check out more about this very useful tool. It is also downlodable from this good site.

Remarkable surface structures are visible on this exposures. To keep track here it is wise to take a look on a Mars chart.The Association of Lunar and Planet Observers (A.L.P.O.) offers at their Mars page not only a Mars chart there are also further links to numerous Mars pictures.

Here is the route to the very informative A.L.P.O. Mars page.

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