Early New Years Eve Martian clouds

 

On Earth we are closing in on a new year but it's spring on Mars' Northern hemisphere. Lot's of North polar cap sublimation means CO2 runs abundant. As you can see plainly on the blue channel there's lots of evening clouds on Mars' volcanic region.

Also the animation was featured in Sky & Telescope events page Mars Extravaganza — Occultation and Opposition Rolled into One! - Sky & Telescope - Sky & Telescope

Good read on Martian seasons 

evening on Mars' volcanic region

https://www.planetary.org/articles/mars-calendar 

Most recent Mars amidst a big backlog

I love fall for astronomy and while I thought my automation scripts were ready for a big planet season of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars they're still in need of tweaking - Michael A. Phillips' Astro Blog: Overview of Fully Automated Planetary Processing

Going back to the most recent Mars as it's my favorites I was happy to see the North Polar Hood and a prominent, dark Olympus Mons!  Here's a derotation of 4x 90s RGB's

And the whole set's animation that was partially lost due to, checks notes, "dog helped me tear down again, lost time due to FC not guiding well"

Just a foster, but Rosita from the Wake SPCA was a great dog and we wish here a good home, despite ruining our drywall and moulding!  

 

j2024-09-09_09-49.1_rrgb_mp

 Just a post of a QHY test on Jove...

Saturn and Titan

 

I tried a friends QHY200M camera out but didn't like the resolution and took advantage of decent skies.  Pretty happy with Titan.

Rest of the season here:

• Imgur - https://imgur.com/a/BtRPDvO 

• Google Photos - https://photos.app.goo.gl/hABBNtPAfVwgB45V8 

2x nights on Jupiter, the first night and better of the 2!

 Still some nagging collimation imperfections!

First Mars of the 2024-2025 season

 Due to a small typo in my original image, I had a wonderfully enlightening exchange with Roger Venable, whom said, "By the way, the blue-white streak over Mare Acidalium is a storm front that branched off the shrinking North Polar Hood. It is homologous to the jet streams that branch of the north polar region of Earth and create storms and tornados in North America in springtime."

2x nights on Jupiter, the avg one

 Decent seeing early but then it went back to average or below.

and the animation!