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Mars & Observing the Red Planet


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49 minutes ago, Fozzie said:

Did any body pick out any Martian moons last night..  I had a tiny spot of light to the north of the planet (below), wondered what that would have been..?  (South was at 12ocklock and syrtis major at 9, the way i was viewing)

No sign of them visually even through my 14in, I assume that I would have to overexpose Mars to show the faint satellites on an image. 

John 

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Mars, the bringer of excitement. 😀

On paper I'm a sixty-year-old grandad who enjoys astronomy, but last night felt like a kid at Christmas.

I wasn't expecting to do any observing, but driving back from seeing our grand-daughter I noticed some stars out and started to twitch. Wheen we got home the planets and moon were obscured by the house, so around 8:30pm, I set up shop in the front garden for a "quick look", and to give a new eyepiece first light. "I'll only be twenty minutes dear..."

There was quite a bit of hazy cloud high up, so I wasn't expecting much. But Jupiter looked lovely with Europa about to disappear behind the giant, and Saturn too with a nice visible shadow on the rings, but Mars looked mushy and behind cloud. Without bothering to disassemble it, I lugged the Evo 9.25 to the back garden where it's more peaceful and looked at some nice star clusters in Cassiopeia and Perseus. New eyepiece (OVL UWA-82, 16mm - courtesy of Beardy30) is beautiful and adds a nice wide field to my collection of mainly 20 year old cheap plossls.

Having played for an hour, sorry, having done a full evaluation, I decided to call it a night. I then noticed that Mars had cleared the rooftops and was staring menacingly at me, demanding I take another look. I'm so glad I did. It looked stunning, clear and stable, way better than I'd ever seen it before. Despite being very bright, I didn't see the "halo" around it that I'd seen on previous nights and got myself comfortable and observed it for a while and realised this special moment had to be captured.

I've never observed Mars in much detail, and certainly never sketched it, so am not really that familiar with the landscape. My artistic skills are pretty rubbish, so I spent two or three hours or so just trying to draw what I could see. I finally crawled into the house around 2am to the audible roll of eyes from my wife. She's actually very supportive, and even came out to see what was getting me excited in the garden.

Today I've spent a few more hours with SkySafari and "The Atlas of the Solar System - Patrick Moore and Garry Hunt", trying to work out exactly what features I've managed to record. I've probably made some blunders as my scaling and perspective is not very good, and I forgot that the planet is revolving, so it's probably a bit stretched. But I'm pretty sure I nailed some of the features, and as I went in "cold", without knowing what I should be drawing, I think it's fairly honest.

The SCT gives a Right-Left inverted image and I had the eyepiece at an angle so I could sit as comfortably as possible in the freezing cold, so it was quite tricky to orient and reconcile my scribblings with features on the maps. So forgive me if I've mislabelled anything.

What's the general advice with drawings. Is it better to leave them inverse "as seen", or scan/photo it and flip it in photoshop?  I've left mine "as seen".

Looking forward to another night with this beautiful planet, which I've learned so much more about in the last 24 hours. Wow it's great to be back observing.

Cheers,

Mark

(The photo is a "pot look" snap shot through the 9mm eyepiece, jacked up with a 2x barlow.)

 

Mars 20090927.jpg

Annotated.jpg

Marks (Camera) 20200927.jpg

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14 minutes ago, Fozzie said:

i wonder if it was Nu Piscium.. (V)

 

 

There was a moderately bright star in the same high power field of view of Mars last night, however I knew that it was too bright, and too far away from Mars to be one of the satellites, looking at Skymap Pro, most likely to have been TYC-135-20-1 Mag 8.93

John 

Edited by johnturley
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19 hours ago, Pixies said:

Hi John,

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

Quite possibly. It is still distinctly resolvable even with the 90mm mak-cass but it's a small feature.

Jupiters GRS looks smaller to me this year as well.

 

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23 hours ago, Rob said:

I have not managed Mars yet due to injury and illness this past month. I'm now finally on the mend, and hope to be out by the weekend. Those that know me and how passionate I am about Mars will appreciate I've been going nuts that I can't get out there.

Some really nice pictures and reports coming in mind.. thanks all Rob

Sorry to hear that, Rob. I hope you're well on the mend now and can get some good skies and better health very soon so you can get some great views 😉.

My own frustration has been mainly rubbish skies...being close to the east coast has meant we have been under clouds at night for almost 3 weeks, whilst much of the rest of the country has enjoyed clear (if not always steady) skies. So I'm hoping it will be our turn soon!🙄😊.

On the plus side I've used the cloudy days to fit a microfocuser to my FS128 and cleaned my eyepieces & binoviewers to within an inch of their lives, so am ready when the sky finally does play ball!

Dave

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13 hours ago, John said:

Quite possibly. It is still distinctly resolvable even with the 90mm mak-cass but it's a small feature.

Jupiters GRS looks smaller to me this year as well.

 

I agree; a week or so ago it looked liked a "snowman" shape to me, and looking two nights ago and taking some pics it looks as though the small head of the snowman has gone leaving just the circular or elliptical part. Definitely smaller.

Chris

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Well I was hopeful of having a look at Mars tonight at its closest approach to Earth, but alas the weather gods are not cooperating. Low cloud  sitting on the mountain and drizzling, and looking gruesome for a few more days.

Oh well, he will still be very close in a few days and I'm hoping to try 300x plus on him with the 12 inch Dob.

20201006_182013.thumb.jpg.5353bebedd09ad03a7547edcc2e6776c.jpg

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I have viewed Mars before but Saturday evening Sunday morning (10th/11th) was the best viewing I have ever had. Real detail visible with red plains, dark brown band and polar regions. It was also a beautiful, still, clear evening which made it doubly wonderful. If only there were more evenings like that. :)

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I considered getting up at 12pm being Mars was at opposition, but, the old saying best laid plans.

I did look at the clock on the nightstand, but being I had to be at work at 4am I didnt get up.

At 2am when I did get up, the skies were incredible! 

The moon had not yet risen so it was very dark. Mars looked brighter than I had ever seen it. I hurried back in with the dogs, got coffee going and showered

Instead of worrying about breakfast, I dressed, grabbed my camera and hurried out.

First I took some widefield of the sky from Orion to Mars.

I only had a few moments to spend at the telescope. With a 3x barlow and 23mm eyepiece surface details showed nicely. I think with the timing I was looking at areas I hadn't seen before. The polar cap stood out distinctly, though I do think it has grown smaller over the past month.

Hurriedly, I took a few single images with my Canon before going back in and finishing up preps for work.

Drove fast, still made it to work on time!

I hope tomorrow is as good, but we have weather forecasted that will probably spoil it.

 

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After several weeks observation, finally at 3.30am this morning the other side of Mars was eyeballed!

Before the not forecast blanket of cloud rolled in thirty minutes later, under good seeing & OK but not great transparency, the 150mm reflector and a 5mm BST presented Terra Cimmeria & Elysium Planitia.

 

Edited by ScouseSpaceCadet
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  • 1 year later...

Has anyone else been up early to view Mars? The forecast was good last night so I set up the 214mm F/7.5 Dob in the evening and was ready for the planets at 4.00 BST.

I had a brief look at Saturn which was very sharp at x124 but showed only the slightest hint (if at all) of the Cassini division. Altitude 17 deg. I'm surprised the division didn't appear more clearly.

Jupiter and Mars had just emerged over a wood with altitudes around 9deg. A homemade ADC corrected the colour enough to show 4 bands on the giant but it was boiling so I concentrated on Mars from then on until around 05.20.

Mars: altitude 9deg to 20deg

diameter 6.3 arcsecs

magnitude 0.7

c.m around 260 

Not a wealth of detail on the red planet but as it rose out of the murk Syrtis major first appeared as a smudge followed by the SPC which became more insistent as the session  wore on. The dawn chorus came and went and the tiny planet steadied to a crisp gibbous outline which I stayed with into the morning sunshine.

An appetiser of what is to come and well worth the effort.

David

Edited by davidc135
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On 28/05/2022 at 20:02, davidc135 said:

Has anyone else been up early to view Mars? The forecast was good last night so I set up the 214mm F/7.5 Dob in the evening and was ready for the planets at 4.00 BST.

I had a brief look at Saturn which was very sharp at x124 but showed only the slightest hint (if at all) of the Cassini division. Altitude 17 deg. I'm surprised the division didn't appear more clearly.

Jupiter and Mars had just emerged over a wood with altitudes around 9deg. A homemade ADC corrected the colour enough to show 4 bands on the giant but it was boiling so I concentrated on Mars from then on until around 05.20.

Mars: altitude 9deg to 20deg

diameter 6.3 arcsecs

magnitude 0.7

c.m around 260 

Not a wealth of detail on the red planet but as it rose out of the murk Syrtis major first appeared as a smudge followed by the SPC which became more insistent as the session  wore on. The dawn chorus came and went and the tiny planet steadied to a crisp gibbous outline which I stayed with into the morning sunshine.

An appetiser of what is to come and well worth the effort.

David

I see a dust storm is beginning on Mars: https://britastro.org/forums/topic/mars-dust-storm-alert-3

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  • 1 year later...

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