From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: December 11, 2007 9:28:08 AM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Mars Toronto Dec 11

Hi Jim;

On 11-Dec-07, at 9:14 AM, jimchung2338 wrote:

Finally after a week skies cleared enough last night to finish collimating my Mewlon 210.

Saved me from making an artificial star. I found collimating with my PGR Flea using

AstroIIDC with the overlaid reticle very handy in determining if my concentric circles and

central obstruction were centered correctly.

Glad that worked for you. Walter Lickteig was the one who requested that.

Of course by the time Mars reached its zenith after midnight, scattered clouds had moved in

and the image was shot through them, 100 sharpest frames out of 1000 per channel using

200 ms frame exposure.

I was out on Friday (or maybe Saturday) night, captured 15 gigs of video over a 3 hour period and got basically nothing. Although the Clearsky clock seeing (scintillation) and the 300 mb plots showed very low turbulence, we had a thermal inversions going on (the air 200 meters above us was +5C° and the ground was -10°C) so that mucked everything up. Only our local weatherman seems to know if those are occurring.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Astro_IIDC/files/Planetary/MarsDec11f30.jpg

Nice one. So far the only shot of Mars I've gotten this opposition with recognizable features is the one I took in October.

Wishing for at least one superb night of seeing for Christmas.

Me too.

Thanks for sharing..

Milton J. Aupperle

President

ASC - Aupperle Services and Contracting

Mac Software (Drivers, Components and Application) Specialist

#1005 - 815 14th Avenue. S.W.

Calgary Alberta T2R0N5

1-(403)-229-9456

milton@outcastsoft.com