I staggered to the observatory with mug of tea in hand after the horrors of an 0300 alarm clock. Thank goodness for summer leave. The clear forecast, unfortunately, had been replaced by partially clear skies full of sucker holes. These skies are the worst kind of observing. Tantalising clear patches but not long enough to capture anything worthwhile.

Or so I thought.

Having caught only a handful of videos (most of which I terminated early as cloud drifted through) I left my laptop stacking the videos while I caught some sleep before the school run. Once they were sharpened and derotated, I was astonished to see that I had caught clouds over a Martian volcano.

The image shows the 25km high Olympus Mons (the largest volcano in the solar system). Pretty cool to be seeing Martian volcanoes I thought. Further reference to the ALPO Mars map shows another nearby volcano, Arsia Mons (20km high). Looking carefully, it has a white orographic cloud cap that trails to the west.

Simply amazing to be capturing Martian clouds from my garden in England while looking through gaps in Earth’s clouds.

Tech Specs in image footer: 3 videos captured using ASI224MC and IR cut filter (more were rejected due to cloud) through C11, x2 barlow and ADC.  Stacked in AS3, sharpened in Registax, derotated in WinJupos and then labelled in Photoshop.