This is my first attempt at photographing Mars. I finally completed the construction of the JaZ Observatory where this photo was taken. I used Mira, my Lurie-Houghton telescope, with a Philips ToUCam webcam. I was able to achieve an image scale of 0.15 arc-sec/pixel by using a stack of a Vernonscope 2.4X barlow, Meade 2X short barlow and a short extension tube in front of the camera. This setup is equivalent to a lens with a focal length of 7,630mm at a focal ratio of f/30.7. The image was processed with Rexistax to align and combine hundreds of frames from the video file. Photograph by Rick Scott.
Updated: 5 October 2003