Mars in the November Sky over the Jodrell Plank Observatory

 

The planet Mars shining red and bright over the Jodrell Plank Observatory late on the 13th November 2022. Images were captured using a fixed tripod mounted Canon 600d DSLR and a Sigma EX wide angle zoom lens at f=10mm. 10x 30 sec RAW lights were captured at ISO1600 and were stacked using Sequator freeware. The image was then cropped and processed using Affinity Photo, GraXpert, GradientXTerminator ' APS and Topaz Denoise AI. Image credit: Pip Stakkert.

Annotated copy of image. Constellations shown in yellow text, star clusters in blue-green, the Moon in white and Mars in red. 

"What a beautiful night last night was! The Moon is waning but still provided sufficient light to illuminate the paving leading to the Observatory Visitors Centre. By 11:00pm ,the bright stars of the constellation Orion were visible over the rooves and hedging that defines our southern boundary. Every two years or so,  Mars and Earth in their respective orbits line up on one side of the Sun. This is called being at 'Opposition'  and is the time when the two planets are closest to each other. Mars will be at opposition at the beginning of December. Because both planets follow elliptical rather than circular orbits, some oppositions are closer than others. For this opposition, Mars is not as close as at opposition two years ago but Mars is much higher in the sky for Northern hemisphere viewers in 2022. We are therefore, hoping to get some very detailed images when we point the big refractor at Mars later in the month. Mars is easily seen with the naked eye and can be imaged with a mobile phone, so why not have a go"? - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.