SUNSET: 
0
Photographer:
Rod Pommier
Location of Photo:
Pommier Observatory, Portland, OR, USA
Date/Time of photo:
2020-10-27, 2020-10-28, and 2020-10-29
Equipment:
Celestron Compustar C14, TeleVue Powermate 2x, Point Grey Flea3 color camera
Description:
This animation of Mars rotation is not made from individual images taken hours apart on the same night. Mars rotates once every 24.6 hours. That means if you observe Mars at the same time each night, it will have made less than one revolution compared to the night before and the net effect is that Mars appears to rotate backwards. For this animation, I used images I took of Mars at roughly 08:30 UT on three consecutive nights from 2020-10-27 through 2020-10-29. Then, by sequencing them in reverse order in the animation, I made it look like Mars is rotating in the correct direction. Olympus Mons can be seen in the upper right part of the disk, rotating until it appears very bright along the right limb, probably from its western slope reflecting direct sunlight. Mare Sirenum and Mare Cimmerium are the chief dark features on the disk. Descriptions of other details visible on the disk and the exposure data can be found with the posts of the individual images on this website.
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