Mars and Saturn on Dec 4
Despite the weather forecasts to the contrary, the skies cleared up this evening. A bit on the chilly side, 24 deg F and air turbulence was 6/10, about average for this area. I set up the Phillips Toucam 740K and took a look at mars. Its noticably smaller when I last took a look at it 10 days ago, its now 16.4 arc-sec across. Syrtis Major was near the western limb.
I also took a look at saturn. Some color bands were visible. I’m still experimenting with the best settings to use with saturn. So far it appears that 5 fps seems work best to best for saturn, whereas 10 fps seemed better for mars. Shutter 1/30 sec, gain 50%, and brightness 50% used here, the same settings I use for mars. I’ve been having some problems with the Toucam lately, the red channel seems to disappear now and then.
