Mars
Good ‘seeing’ is critical to capturing detailed planetary images. The best planetary images come from the best locations which is why astronomers will travel to exotic locations for opposition. My St. Louis observatory has average seeing conditions most of the time with occasional good seeing conditions. The image below was from a night where the seeing was average other than a ten-minute stretch where the seeing became very good. I was fortunate to be imaging at that time! All other images from that night were soft in comparison. These rare moments of seeing are what planetary astronomers pursue!
August 23, 2024, at 10:56 UT: ~24 hours later with dust cloud no longer visible
Angular size of Mars at time of image(s): 6 arc seconds
Please note that all of the 2022 Mars images suffered from using a camera with the wrong pixel size. The images below used a Sony sensor that had 3.75 micron pixels; too large for the focal length of my OTA.
