Mars Moon?

[perkil8r]

Ok this may or may not be right but on my report page the other guy who saw what I saw has corrected his post. He forgot it was inverted so he says SE. This also obviously shows you how cowboy I am about this obsession as I too completely forgot about the mirror effect so my whole report is misleading as North may be North or I may have meant south... damn.

BUT it does make it VERY HIGHLY likely that I did in fact see Phobos! I am going to leave it off of my target list for now as it is so uncertain but since I know I will be able to spot it again I have high hopes.

Which was why I was saying maybe Deimos as OP said "in the eyepiece" so I flipped it and stellarium was at the time only showing Deimos as "visible".

[peterbolson]

Background stars do not move with the planet. This did. Only thing I am not 100% about is if it is Phobos or Deimos.

In my observation report from last night someone else has also spotted the moon last night.

That was me. I watched it for about 15mins moving in a constant relationship to Mars ( definately not a star). It was about 4 diameters south east of Mars so probably Deimos. I was using a 6mm TMB on my 200mm SW, ie mag x200.

Never seen it before so I'm going to be looking again tonight - conditions should be good so I might even see the other one

Peter

[lukebl]

... I watched it for about 15mins moving in a constant relationship to Mars ( definately not a star)....

Not quite sure what you're getting at here. What makes you think that it wasn't a star? Over a period of 15 minutes a star would move across the field of view at precisely the same rate as the planet. Over a period of hours or days you would notice a gradual change in Mars's position relative to the stars, but it is pretty imperceptible.

Enjoy viewing Mars but, trust me, it wasn't Phobos. Gosh, I sound like a curmudgeonly old troll!

[Nexus 6]

Seriously guys, both moons would need one heck of a telescope for you to be able to observe them. I have never seen them in the few chances I have observed Mars even using a decent planetary telescope/eyepiece combination....cpc 925 fl = 2350mm BGO fl 7mm eyepiece.

2350 divided by 7 = 335.7

which is really pushing the power for me with this combination. Our ever consistent poor climate is a major factor in limiting how far its possible to increase power for a given set of equipment.

the 925 has a given limiting magnitude limit of around 14.5 which is only just above what it would take to observe both moons anyway and I doubt I will ever get to pick out objects of that magnitude from the uk.

HTH