Hi All,
The clouds finally cleared around midnight last night.

Despite the brutally cold weather last night, I decided to brave it for a couple of hours in my back yard to Capture Mars.

Mars is looking pretty nice and growing fast as it get closest and brightest at the end of this month. Currently it is 97% lit. This is my first attempt this opposition.

I captured this image of Mars with a DMK firewire camera & 10" sct, 1200 frames per channel RGB, stacked in Registax, Finalized & Balance in Adobe.

Seeing was rather poor, coming and going..could not get decent seeing for long.

Considering how cold and less than ideal seeing, I did managed to nab some details,
North Polar Ice Cap top, Acidalia Planitia, top center,
Terra Meridiana to the lower right, and
Valles Marineris the largest Grand Canyon in the solar system to the lower left.
Far left limb you can see some bright fluffy clouds forming.

There is a small hint of a south polar cap too.

Mars is only 12.87 Arc sec across, still small and a challenge to get details in less than good seeing.

The Martian Central Meridian is at 21.2 degrees in this image.

here is the link to the image
http://www.galacticimages.com/images/Mars010310_Chumackweb.jpg

Best Regards,
John Chumack
www.galacticimages.com