Mars

The Red Planet of the Solar System, Mars, is the fourth planet from the Sun. This dusty, cold desert planet is located about 58 million miles away from us and is half the size of Earth, with a radius of 2,106 miles. Even though Mars looks completely different in size and color than Earth, they are both dynamic planets with seasons, an atmosphere, polar ice caps, canyons, and extinct volcanoes. Furthermore, research has shown that these natural beings on Mars may have been even more active in the past, suggesting it may have been the home to ancient life forms.

Chance for Life

Mars is one of the most explored bodies in our solar system, and it's the only planet where we've sent rovers to roam the alien landscape. NASA currently has two rovers (Curiosity and Perseverance), one lander (InSight), and one helicopter (Ingenuity) exploring the surface of Mars. Along with many other aerospace companies, NASA's goal is terraforming Mars to become inhabitable again and making humanity a multi-planetary species!

From NASA's observations, researchers and astronomers believe there could have been life on Mars millions of years ago. They think this could be true from the confirmation that liquid water once flowed on Mars, the identification of Mars' polar ice caps (Image above), the existence of nutrients, and a past magnetic field that protected the planet from cosmic and solar radiation. These discoveries give humanity hope of meeting another form of life, confirming that we are not the only ones created from the big bang.

On February 18, 2021, NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover landed on Mars. Its purpose was to search for any signs of ancient microbial life in the composition of the soil, minerals, and other terrestrial materials. While on its mission, Perseverance's camera took this amazing photo (above) of the Milky Way and night sky from Mars' surface. If you want to see Mars' surface in a 360-degree view, check out Hugh Hou's Virtual Tour utilizing Perseverance's pictures here. Hopefully one day in the future, we will be able to take trips down to the early stages of civilization on Mars to see this same sky for ourselves. 

Photographing Mars

Planetary Photography is one of the most popular types of astrophotography around. With each planet's unique characteristics, astrophotographers enjoy capturing photos of every planet from Mercury to Uranus. 

Since Mars is very bright and big in the night sky, it's easy to locate with a designated astronomy app like Stellarium or Sky Guide. The problem is its size. Even though you can see the bright dot in the sky, you need at least 150x magnification to capture some details of the red planet's surface and ice caps. So to get a good photo of Jupiter, I suggest having at least 200x magnification with an aperture of 8 inches to capture the details on its surface. To calculate your telescope's magnification, use this formula: (Focal Length of Telescope)/(Focal Length of Eye Piece) = Magnification.

The next step in getting a crisp shot of Mars' surface details is taking multiple photos and stacking them. Since Mars is so bright, there is a simple trick to this. Set your camera's ISO to around 2400-3600, switch to video record mode, and raise the FPS to the highest it can possibly go. This will allow us to take a tremendous amount of photos over a period of time. For example, if I had my camera set to 30 FPS, I would be taking 1800 pictures per minute of Mars. Now you could go two ways with this. If you have a motorized mount, set it up towards Mars, let it track it, and start recording for as long as you please. Remember, the more data you collect, the greater your photo's quality will be. If you do NOT have a motorized mount, set up your telescope to make Mars pass through the center of your camera's frame while you record. Even though you won't be able to take 10-minute videos, this will still be adequate data to make a pleasing image of Mars. After taking your video, you can center, stack, and process it through PIPP, AutoStakkert, and RegiStax. I will be making a tutorial soon on how to do all of this, but for now, you can find a good tutorial here. If you want to go above and beyond, you can take your final product from RegiStax into Photoshop or PixInsight for some touch-ups.

My photo of Mars below was captured using an unmodified Canon Rebel EOS T3i (600D) DSLR camera and a refractor telescope (100mm Aperture, 900mm focal length).

Mars Details:

• Planet # from the Sun: 4

• Moons: 2

• Object Type: Rocky Planet

• Mean Distance: 140 million miles

• Apparent Magnitude: -2.91

• Apparent Size: 4 - 25 Arc Seconds

Resources:

MARS Virtual Tour (NASA/Hugh Hou)

NASA Science - Mars

Perseverance Rover Article (NASA and ESA)

Gallery of Mars