Venus and Mars expectations

[scottphillips]

Ok so for the first time tonight I turned my scope to Venus, not expecting much it appeared as a super bright star through my skywatcher 130m,

Jupiter was awesome with 2 clear bands even at 6:00pm tonight plus the 4 Galilean moons clearly visible, but didn't stay out for Mars as waiting a few weeks to start viewing it, but what can I expect from Mars through my scope?

Thanks

[ronin]

Small red disk. :eek: :eek:

No Martians, no rovers.

[JR1987]

Mars isn't going to be up to much this year. It only comes into opposition every 2 years.

It is next door.. but its significantly smaller than say, Earth (and you can fit 1000 earths into Jupiter)

so you need a fairly big scope to pick out any reasonable detail.. I'm talking around 10 inches of aperture. 

check out the planetary imaging section for a better idea on what views people get from the scopes they own just by checking out the scopes in there signatures.

[Qualia]

check out the planetary imaging section for a better idea on what views people get from the scopes they own just by checking out the scopes in there signatures.

Better still, for purely visual work, check out sketches, for this is the kind of thing you can expect to see when observing. Here are a few I did last year; they're not good but do give a general idea of what to expect from a 10" when Mars moves towards opposition:

[John]

Rob's very modest - his drawings are excellent !

It's worth bearing in mind though that even at it's largest, Mars will still appear rather small in the eyepiece. The maximum size that Mars will be over the next few years is a bit less than half the apparent diameter of Jupiter. That will be during the 2018 Mars opposition.

[Pondus]

Observed Mars (in opposition), Jupiter and Saturn last spring using both my scopes same night. 130p Heritage vs 8".

Mars was definitely the Object where the largest telescope was totally superior, when it came to observing surface details.

But still :  Mars conjunction with Jupiter and Venus later this year (dawn  late Oct - early Nov) might be awesome no matter telescope size.

Rune