Mars Opposition and a Nearly Finished Map

Tonight, October 13th 2020 is Mars opposition. About a week ago was Mars’ closest approach to Earth, but tonight is when Mars is directly opposite the sun from Earth’s point of view. After a few days of bad weather I decided to take (yet another) picture of Mars to try and fill out the rest of my planetary map.

I used a 4x barlow lens and my ZWO ASI290MC camera. Settings have been the same for all pictures: 15ms exposure and 175 gain. I took a 3 minute video, stacked the top 25% in autostakkert, and sharpened the final image with wavelets in Registax.

At this point I have a large portion of the planet photographed, though the part I’m coming up to next I only saw once very early in September when the view wasn’t as good. Hopefully within a week I will have all the photos I need. I’m really hoping for some good weather because the spot that’s left includes Olympus Mons and Valles Marineris.

The map so far uses 4 images that have been slightly color corrected to make them blend better.