Here is a shot of Mars that I captured in the early morning of 16 September 2024 at 09:23 UT, while it was only 7 arc seconds across, and the lit phase was only 41%.
You can see the North Polar Cap shrouded in clouds, at the bottom you can see the darker surface feature of Terra Meridiani.
Despite its tiny size at the moment, there are still larger details to be seen and captured. Mars is currently shining at 0.54 magnitude
Light takes 10 minutes and 38.9422 seconds to travel from Mars and arrive to us.
The distance of Mars from Earth is currently 119,023,676.728 miles (191,550,040 kilometers).
This image was captured from my backyard observatory in Dayton, Ohio with my C-11 SCT scope, Bisque MyT Robotic Mount, QHY462mc Cmos color Camera, 2x Barlow, ADC, Captured with Fire-Capture Software as a SER Video File, 4ms exposure, stacked 6000 frames out of 14,000, Astrosurface, Registax6, and Adobe Raw CC 2025.
Best Regards,
John Chumack
www.galacticimages.com
