Mars after opposition and occultation - 9 December 2022

[Roberto]

Took a chance on Friday night to image Mars after weeks of procrastinating about it.  Seeing has not been great for planetary work but the - very - cold conditions of Friday evening allowed some above average seeing.

Result is here:  https://www.astrobin.com/xbf7sb/B/

Composite of 6 frames aligned in WinJupos after selecting the best 16K frames from each video (260K frames in total).

This was taken using a 10" f/20 Maksutov at prime focus.  Several features are visible including the north polar cap, some clouds towards the south pole, Olympus Mons and Tharsis Montes amongst others.  Also some of the very fine sand worms.

Roberto