Mars: red and crystal clear.

[cotterless45]

Wow, what a beautiful clear night, the full Moon is stunningly bright.

Mars was crystal clear at x240 in the 200 Orion. We could see surface colour,red, moons and two bright areas aswell as a full range of surface markings. In the end I went and got a map of Mars, so we could work out what we were seeing.

There was more detail without a red filter.

We have never seen such wonderful detail, pity the battery pack decided to pack up, manual tracking is just hard work.

Before packing in and noticing ice on the tube I had a view of Saturn

rising. There was plenty of details to the ring system, Cassini being clear on both sides, with super surface detail, nice.

[Stu]

It was great tonight wasn't it? Wasn't necessarily expecting it given the forecast so a nice surprise. Using the 106mm apo as seems normal at the moment. Need to try the mak on the giro mount to see if I can use it more frequently rather then setting up the sphinx. Finally found my counter-weight bar which really helps keep the motion smooth, have been missing it.

Back to the subject, great views of Mars at up to x230, both polar caps clearly seen and Syrtis Major tracked across the disk, really nice to be able to see the planet rotating during the evening. Other smaller markings visible during moments of good seeing.

Great views of Saturn too as it got higher, and moved into the clear air between the houses. Cassini clear which is the first time I've seen it for quite a while. Nice detail in the rings and also in the disk surface. A few moons dotted around too, not checked what they were. I felt the Neodymium filter, which is great on Mars, did not help with Saturn so didn't use it.

Scope was icing up towards the end but dew straps on objective and ep kept them clear.

Nice simple session, only used the 3-6 nagler zoom which covered everything I needed.

Stu

[Admiral Crispy]

I agree, tonight is a bit of a wonder night in terms of transparency. Mars is showing ridiculous amounts of detail in my 10" Dob. Just bagged Deimos, even though it is a full moon! Crazy! I finally bagged Mimas for Saturn, which astonishingly wasn't even difficult, and I've never been able to see it til now, its been out of my limit! I may even have just glimpsed Hyperion!