Here is the URL for an image taken August 26th 2003
Ed Grafton is like a one-man Hubble Space Telescope. Okay, so that accolade
is perhaps a bit lavish. But few backyard astronomers have achieved Grafton's
level of expertise when it comes to photographing planets.
He took this picture of the red one from his back yard in Houston, Texas on
Aug. 26. He used a 14-inch Celestron telescope.
"I thought you might find this of interest," he wrote humbly when e-mailing another Mars picture he had taken. We did, and so we asked him for his best shot around the peak of the event, Aug. 27. It's above. The planet is upside-down because the telescope flips the image.
Grafton writes about his techniques in the September issue of Sky & Telescope magazine. More of his planetary photographs, with extensive caption information, are available at http://www.ghg.net/egrafton.
Meanwhile, Mars remains a delightful target in the
evening sky. [Mars
Watch]
-- Robert
Roy Britt
Credit: Ed Grafton
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