Taken in the first week of September, 2003, this image was taken
only a couple of weeks after the 2003 conjunction, so the apparent
size of Mars was not significantly different from the August closest approach.
The white area at left top of the planet is it's south pole (image inverted by telescope)

Date taken: September 5, 2003
Location: Ft. Worth, TX
Telescope: Meade 8" LX200 @ f/20 FL 4000mm
Camera: Nikon Coolpix 4500, afocal connection with 20mm eyepiece, ISO 100
50 images at 1/60 second exposure; full optical zoom
Camera control: The Force
Focus: Hocus Focus
Processing:(July 12, 2005)
ImagesPlus 2.50 for auto grading, auto align, auto combine and Digital Dev.
Photoshop for Unsharp Mask, color adj. and resizing
Comments:
This image is a combine of only 50 images that I was able to use from more than 500 images,
because the planet was only about 15 degrees above the eastern horizon at the start
and had made it to only about 30 degrees at the end of the session.
Being that low in the sky meant I had to image through a lot of unstable,
light polluted air over Ft. Worth
I finally decided to process it because I now can use the new version of
ImagesPlus, which includes more automation. The automation enables
me to evaluate the 500 images much more easily,
since I don't have to look at each image and make a judgement as to it's quality.