Opposition of Mars May 22, 2016

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May 24

2016

by Fernando Roquel Torres

The opposition of Mars means when the red planet and the sun are on opposite sides of the sky. Mars looks in the east at sunset, amounting almost to be above our heads at midnight, and glows a bright orange color that is almost 10 times brighter than a star of the first magnitude. This event occurs every 26 months (Science @ NASA).

The event began on Sunday May 22, 2016 in Caguas, Puerto Rico. I began to prepare to capture this astronomical event. The weather did not help much as they had many clouds and windy. I am preparing my astronomical equipment (Meade LX90, Orion Sirius EQ-G, 2.5x Barlow Luminos Celestron, Celestron NexImage 5). Already at 9pm when I proceed with regular capture 3minutes and a half set to 25 fps.

After the recording section, cutting and centralization, registration, alignment and stacked with ICAP, Castrator, Autostakkert and Registax programs, a product which allows you to view details like clouds in the region of Tharsis, Mount Olympus (Olympus Mon) was obtained which has a height of 24,000 kms and polar ice caps. Already in the post processing GIMP was used for marking regions and final arrangements of capture.

This capture only shows the different environments on the planet Mars, but behind a presentable to the public picture, there are a number of skills, processes and tools which allow you to convert or transform the input to a working and ready to share the world product.

References:
Science @ NASA's Mars Opposition
http://ciencia.nasa.gov/ciencias-especiales/28mar_opposition/

Photos of Mars by Fernando Torres Roquel
Caguas, Puerto Rico 5/22/2016