A Night of Three Planets

The red planet Mars -two images taken with the QHY5-11 planetary camera and a Televue 3x Barlow lens attached to the 127mm Meade Apo Refractor. Credit: Kurt Thrust.

" The team at the Jodrell Plank Observatory was mobilized last night to capture some images of the planet Mars which is approaching opposition and its nearest point to Earth. Mars and the Earth line up in their respective orbits approximately every two years but actual planet to planet distance varies from opposition to opposition. This year Mars is quite close and so looks bigger and brighter in our night sky. The planetary disc is currently in excess of 20 arc secs and will not appear as large in our skies again until 2033. Mars is also quite high in our northern hemisphere sky making photography much easier. The reddish areas in the above images roughly correspond to sandy desert terrain and the darker areas are thought to be representative of exposed rock. Mars' southern polar cap is pointed towards us and can be seen as a  small white oval disc.  The Southern hemisphere of Mars is experiencing 'summer'  and therefore much of the polar cap has sublimated into the atmosphere and is therefore much smaller than usual. At the northern pole you can just make out a white carbon dioxide cloud cover. The right image shows a small patch of cloud towards and below the northern cloud cap which is probably associated with the shield volcano Olympus Mons. Olympus Mons is thought to be the largest volcano in the Solar System.                

 Prior to imaging Mars we captured some video clips of Saturn as it skimmed across the Observatory's southern horizon. To finish the evening we turned the telescope towards the distant ice giant Uranus which, although much much larger than Mars, appeared tiny in the dark reaches of space". - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory

Saturn and four of it's Moons composite image taken with QHY5-11 colour planetary camera Televue 3x Barlow lens attached to 127mm Meade Apo Refractor. Credit: Kurt Thrust

The tiny blue dot that is Uranus in its orbit beyond Saturn. Captured with the QHY5-11 colour planetary camera, Televue 3x Barlow lens attached to 127mm Meade Apo Refractor. Credit : Kurt Thrust