Mars 2007 opposition, second image

My second attempt for Mars imaging was near to 2007 opposition at 22nd December. Last time I did not succeed on imaging with my Barlow lens. Now I was able to get decent sized planet on the webcam sensor. There were not so many details on the side of Mars I have photographed, so more attempts are needed. I tried to focus as cafully as I could, with WO SCT focuser. There was no sharp focus point present. This may have been due to seeing effects. I had to battle a lot during imaging, to avaoid frost formation on the corrector lens. Good point to continue for next imaging round. Equiment used: Celestron C8 XLT, Televue 3x Barlow, SPC900NC. Image capturing and processing: VirtualDub, Registax v4 and Photoshop CS2.

Mars 2007 opposition, first light

Long time (over two weeks :-) after I got my C8 package, skies were finally clearing at Espoo. On the early morning hours of 13th December 2007, I carried my (damn heavy) equipment to near hill. First I did some visual tests of my scope, then finally pointed C8 to Mars. I got couple of raw video sequences. The planet size on the webcam sensor was way too small. Still some small details were revealed. I tried also to attach 3x Barlow lens, but I did not got video captured because of focusing problems (WO SCT focuser worked OK).