Another clear night. I have got my planetary imaging workflow down to a tee now.

Once the roof has rolled back and the telescope aligned, I can have Mars in the camera field of view and the ADC adjusted ready to catch photons as the seeing allows. FireCapture is set to record 4 minutes video files every 5 minutes – saving them in WinJupos format – ready to process later.

As a result it was wonderful to spend 3 hours watching Mars in what was quite good seeing while the radio played in the background.

At the start of the session, the Tharsis region was just disappearing and some cloud was visible over Arsia Mons.

As the evening wore on, Mars rose higher revealing finer and finer details. The volcanic region Elysium Mons was on the meridian. Several smaller darker regions are just visible in the northern-Amazonis region, adjacent to Propontis Complex. Sinus Gomer was prominent as was Hisperia but no dust storms were noticeable in the southern hemisphere.

By 0100 I decided to call it a night. The hard drive was full to bursting and I was trying not to fall asleep!