Mars pix , seeing

Hi all,
I am new to this so my son helped me put up a pix of Mars I got tonight. I thought I finally had a good night for seeing so I went to get a better eyepiece, pencil and paper. I tried taking a pix with the higher power and it wouldn't focus worth a darn. It has been weeks since it has been good enough to make a drawing. I don't know how I am missing out so much on better seeing. Your drawings have been great. The pix was through an 8" f/10 Newtonian, but I prefer my 6" refractor, for which I need to build a new mount, or a 6" MakNewt. Any advice on how to process a pix like this, do I send in unprocessed pix; and are simple drawings of Mars useful? I don't know how to figure some of the requested information on the forms. Like magnitude. Earlier in the summer I finished a drawing of Mars after sunrise. Would faintest magnitude visible be something like -2?
Thanks,
Drew

Attached Image:

I can't help you any on the imaging stuff, as I don't do any myself ... but I can give you some information on magnitudes. First of all, the greater the magnitude, the fainter the object. -2 is actually very bright, brighter than the brightest star. The Sun's magnitude is -27, the moon's is -13. Venus varies from about -4 to -2, Jupiter from about -3 to -1.8. Mars at this latest opposition was around -3 or -2.8. Saturn ranges from around 0 to +1.

Sirius, the brightest star, is -1.4 or thereabouts. Arcturus and Vega are both very near 0 magnitude, whereas Aldebaran, Pollux, and Antares are examples of stars near magnitude +1. The stars in the Big Dipper are pretty much all between 2.0 and 3.0 (give or take). On good clear nights, from a very dark site, the faintest stars will be around +6.5 or so. This number will vary, depending on your vision. Hope this helps.

Clear nights ... dark sites,
Darren