Mars and Saturn Imaging Session - March 2-3, 2012

I was invited to share the night sky to a group of elementary and high school students last March 2. The kids had a great time seeing the bright 4 planets in real time. Aside from sharing the planetary view, I also use the opportunity to image Mars in the early evening which shows the Chryse area of interest but since Mars was a bit low still, I still proceeded to image it and the image still shows the North Polar Cap as well as the Chryse region :) I hope to image this area next weekend when this region will be visible before midnight and Mars high near the zenith by that time.

Past midnight of March 3, with Mars near zenith already, I again image Mars but the central meridian features of Mars shows lesser prominent terrain features such as Mare Borreum, Mare Simmerium and Nix Olympia area. Mars , by the way is near opposition which will occur on March 5 in the Philippines with a maximum apparent size of 13.9 arc seconds as well as a brightness of magnitude -1.2 .

I also got to image Saturn also before I went home feeling satisfied that I was able to share the planets Venus, Jupiter,Mars and Saturn to the students as well as got to image the planets :)