The winter of 1993 saw Mars come to one of its more distant oppositions, this time in Gemini.  I observed this apparition from Colorado since at the time I was living in Boulder.  This picture was taken on January 3, four or five days before opposition.  This configuration of Mars in Gemini is not a bad replica of the configuration it will demonstrate in January 2025, when it comes to opposition on the 16th (nine days later than in 1993).

The picture was taken with a Nikon FE2 using a 50 mm lens probably wide open at f/1.8 and with an exposure of sev-eral minutes, piggybacked on my Meade 2045 4" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope; the slide was scanned in 2024.

Notice the color rendering of the stars ~ this film really captures the colors extremely well!  Mars and Pollux are portrayed very accurately, and notice the contrast with Castor on the white/blue end as well as the stars in the upper foot of Gemini, to the lower left of the open cluster M35.  The other thing that film does better than a digital camera is portray the rela-tive brightness of stars ~ the bright ones stand out from background stars on a film photo just like they appear to the eye.