Pixies

That view is pretty close to what I could see - although visually it was more in focus. The south polar cap was barely visible. I could make out Mare Cimmerium and Syrtis Minor - but the viewing was pretty unstable (windy) and I was dodging the clouds. It completely clouded over before I could settle down to sketch anything.

Very nice. Too many clouds, not enough gaps for me last night. I find this Mars viewer here good. https://britastro.org/node/23843 It looks more like what you can see than SkySafari does. Note - it uses Universal Time

Fixed it. Hardly worth it, though!

Cloudy here - with a few gaps. I tried to record something using my smartphone. But it was the first time I've tried anything like this and I think the focus is out a wee bit. Anyway - processed very basically as per AstroDIY's guide. It's not great but at least I managed it on the big day!

I'd worry that by the time I'd get up the ladder, the sun would be up! I don't think I'd find it very a very relaxed observation.

This guide confuses me. I appears to miss the adjustment of the secondary to centre the image of the primary within it. It goes straight from aligning the secondary under the focuser, to adjusting the primary.

I had a cheap SW barlow (£20). It was rubbish and caused an obvious deterioration to the view. I only bought it for barlowing a laser (I wanted to try out for collimation). Even with that it was no good, as the lack of any anti-reflection coatings meant that the laser light was reflected straight back and ruined any view. So - cheap barlows can be poor barlows Try them both out and compare. I'm sure FLO will take it as a return.

You're right. I was getting the rotation mixed-up.

Thursday is looking good, just now. Fingers crossed it stays that way. I've actually just bought a smartphone mount, to see if I can get any kind of image. But I intend to carry on sketching for the rest of this apparition. This is the first year I've been using a telescope and in some ways I feel a bit spoilt! First Neowise (although that didn't really need a scope) and now Mars.

Desperate for some clear skies just now. Is that a camera you are using?

Hi all, North and South are easy. The south polar cap is visible just now, and it appears at the top (rotated to the right slightly) in the view of my reflector. The planet appears to rotate from right to left> so the martian dawn is on the right-most limb (again - in the rotated reflector view). Is this the Martian East? If yes, then with the image rotated to the correct (real world) view, the compass would be: N E W S Or do we use our own compass imposed upon the view?

Forget about the collimation cap for now. Use the Cheshire as a sight tube, to align the secondary under the focuser. You can put a piece of paper over the bottom section, to hide the primary while you do this. Once your are happy with this, take off the paper and then adjust the tilt of the secondary to get the cross-hairs over the doughnut. Then the secondary is done.

Everytime I try the backup site, I get a 'malicious site' warning! The normal site is working for me. I bought a UHC filter yesterday and it's OK just now, too.

The water is pretty hard in Essex, isn't it? I'm from Sussex originally - the water was so hard that a few drops of washing up liquid would probably do nothing. The water where I am now (Edinburgh) is so soft that a few drops will produce a bowl full of bubbles.

@markse68, a suitably named panecil! This is all very interesting. I was think of hitting the local art shop this afternoon.

A new Bresser! Well - I was hoping not to anger the cloud gods. That didn't go well, then.

Are you getting a direct replacement?

Thanks @John and @Don Pensack I was looking at getting a UHC and Oiii. Both 2" - so probably one soonish and then the other later. 2 questions, please: 1. Is the NPB more similar to a UHC? And if so, which is better? 2. I know the Oiii is the one-to-have for the Veil, but is the UHC more general-purpose and perhaps get more use in the long term? Sorry - that looks more like 3 questions! Cheers

I was seeing something similar the previous night. On the left (as per our rotated reflector views), appear 2 dark 'lines' Syrtis Major and Minor, which diverge North and South. On the right are 3 dark lines - Sinus Sabaeus, Mare Serpentis and (I think) Mare Erythraeum, which curve upwards. All meet centrally under Hellas. I thought at the time there was something familiar and 'animal-like'....

Hi John, How would the NBP compare with an Oiii with something like the Veil Nebula?

Pencil, mainly. Have been touching-up digitally - the black surround and white highlights. I nicked a wee bit of my son's pastels to try something tonight. Not sure if it worked. Used some pink card as background, too. I want to show the cold blue-grey of the albedo features that I see, but not having much luck. I think a visit to the art shop to get inspiration.

Hi, Instead of clogging up the forum with lots of threads, I thought I'd have one thread where I'll put my sketches. So tonight, I managed to catch an hour. The sky was transparent and the seeing better than Saturday night. I love seeing how Mars rotates just a bit each night. So 2 days after my last sketch, the view is quite different. Tonight, Syrtis Major and Syrtis Minor are the main features, with Hellas obvious too. Mare Serpentis and Sinus Sabaeus fade towards the morning limb, these being the forward features 2 days ago. The polar cap is still bright and distinct, but very much smaller than 4 weeks ago. However, I'm still hoping that I'll observe a bright feature over the next few weeks, other than the cap and the northerly mists/hood.

Hehe - yes I know. I guess I wasn't very articulate in my question. Prob third late night in a row. I was looking for confirmation that others were seeing the same thing. The size of the cap had appeared to have reduced quite significantly over a couple of weeks..

Hi John, Do you think the south polar cap is getting smaller? I'm under the impression that it is.

Is there a way to see a 'repeat' of this session? One of the early ones was available to watch again on YouTube after the event. Cheers