Mars Pictures

Mars Pictures

These pictures show both the best of ground amateur astronomical photography as well as the state-of-the-art products of the space age.

Mars 8/02/03 by Gary Jensen et.al. taken with the University of Denver's 20 inch Clark refractor.
A great mosaic of MOC camera images taken from Mars orbit showing one complete hemisphere. This link will take you to the site of Malin Space Science Systems.
A more compressed but still excellent version of the picture above.
A great mosaic of MOC camera images taken from Mars orbit showing the other hemisphere. ll take you to the site of Malin Space Science Systems.
A more compressed but still excellent version of the picture above.
A picture taken from the Hubble Space Telescope during the 2001 opposition.
The Hubble Mars 2001 Opposition picture with some interesting features labeled.
This is a MOC Camera medium resolution picture of the so-called face-on-mars taken from Mars orbit.
This picture was taken by DAS member Ron Pearson.
This picture was taken by DAS member John Chapter with a Meade LX200-12inch and 2x Televue Powermate with a Nikon D1x digital camera. The photo was taken June 28, 2003, at 10:22a UT, from Lakewood, CO. The Mars North Pole is up, the photo is correct left to right, and Mars is 16.2 arc-seconds in diameter. The picture is a single image taken at 1/40 sec with an equivalent ISO of 400 at f/20 with no filter. Processing was done with Picture Window Pro® 3.1h. Using the Sky and Telescope online "Mars Profiler program", I found that Mars was centered on longitude 320 Degrees with Syrtis Major to the upper right. I believe that the bluish fringe at the top of the image is the result of atmospheric color dispersion discussed in the August Sky & Telescope.
For this picture, John Chapter used his Meade LX200-12inch with a TuoUcam video camera. The photo was taken July 31, 2003, at 3:30 am local time in Lakewood, CO.
This picture taken by skilled amateur Ed Grafton near Houston shows what can be done with stacked digital images acquired with an amateur-class telescope.