Astrophoto: Approaching Mars by Efrain Morales

by Dianne Castaneda on January 20, 2012

Astrophoto: Approaching Mars by Efrain Morales

Approaching Mars. Image Credit: Efrain Morales

This is an amazing image of Mars as it approaches the Earth captured by Efrain Morales on January 9, 2012. In this image, Mars shows off its largest volcano, Olympus Mons, which also happens to be the largest in the Solar System under orographic clouds and at the Tharsis Montes region at the limb.

Efrain used the following equipment and specs in taking this photo:
LX200ACF 12 in. OTA, F30, CGE mount, PGR Flea3 Ccd, TeleVue 3x barlows, Astronomik Ir, RGB filter set.

Check out Efrain’s website and Flickr page for more astrophotos.

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Dianne Castaneda is the Assistant Editor of Universe Today. She's also a Civil Engineer who has worked for a Government-sponsored University research project. Her interests are physics, traveling and music.

  • xchaser Frank Muniz

    Nice work Efrain.

  • Joseph Mahsman

    Why are the latitudes below the poles a darkish brown color?

    • magnus.nyborg

      The darker areas contains significant amounts of Magnetite (Fe3O4) wich seems to be a byproduct of the repeated iceing and thawing, bringing up fresh material from underneath. Magnetite have a dark bluish hue.

      Even in the low oxygen atmosphere of Mars, Magentite is slowly oxygenized into Hematite (Fe2O3, basically rust) wich have a distinct reddish hue.

      The separate distribution of the colored zones are likely a product of the windpatterns, since Hematite easily crumbles into very small particles that can be carried by winds.

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