Mars?

[Manok101]

Ok so my first impression of mars was... Red. Very red. My second was little streaks of white, are those clouds? I know mars doesn't have much of an atmosphere so the question is what was I seeing? Ice maybe? Btw last night is when I saw it.

[Dude]

I think you saw the polar caps on Mars.

[Manok101]

Do they extend to the center of the planet?

[John]

No, the pole caps appear as tiny spots of white located, unsurprisingly, at the poles. Often only one is visible. With it's current very small apparent diameter (around 8 arc seconds I think) it will appear as a small pinkish dot even at quite high power. The pole caps would be tiny white spots against this very small pinkish dot. Like many planetary features they can be difficult to make out in less-than ideal seeing conditions and with small scopes.

I've no idea what the white streaks where - clouds have been seen by amateur scopes so I guess it could be clouds but my understanding is that these, if present, are much more indistinct than the pole caps.

[cantab]

Clouds...on Earth :-P

(jk. No idea really.)

[andrew63]

What about dust storms - seen fairly often on Mars?

andrew

[Manok101]

My understanding is those are dark in color? Again I've got a 10" and have only seen mars the once. These were very hazy in appearance. One was really big, the rest were barely visible, I dont suppose they would be surface features like mountains and whatnot?