Possible Clouds on Mars?

These images were captured at 17:17:52 UTC on 22nd August 2003. The interesting feature in these images is he white spot just to the left of the south polar cap (SPC).

I don't know what this is yet - it may just be part of the SPC, but it seems too far away from it so my current guess is that it is clouds which are refracting sunlight.


The processed mars.


The red box surrounds the area of interest.


Reprocessed to highlight the area of interest.

The raw frames were captured onto a dell inspiron laptop using qastrocam for linux.
The instrument was a 250mm dia. f/6 newtonian with a pair of stacked 2x barlows for effective f/24.
The camera was a Philips ToUCam Pro webcam.

220 frames processed through K3CCD tools, Registax, Astra Image, and the GIMP :-)

Anthony Wesley