Mars and Solis Lacus 27/5/16

[mikeDnight]

Mars last night gave one of its best shows yet, as it was in a reasonably steady sky. Apart from a few bright areas along the limb, there at first appeared to be little on view other than a dark feature in the lover left quadrant ( I was using a prism diagonal and so the image is the right way up but the wrong way round). This dark feature turned out to be Solis Lacus 'the Eye of Mars'. It would doubtless have been much more interesting had it been actually on the central meridian rather than sneaking off the edge.

On my little mars globe there is little in the way of albedo features for the meridian on show, however in the telescope, the whole disk was littered with light grey markings set against an orange backdrop. In the northern hemisphere the contrast between the grey and orange created the effect of a definite boundary at times. It would only take a little imagination to relate such boundaries with Schiaparelli's canals. If Mars had been as high as Jupiter for this apparition, the view would have been spectacular!

Also on view is Tharsis, and I believe  the dark marking to the right of centre is Olympus Mons, though I didn't recognise it as such in the eyepiece due to the complexity of the detail and the low level of definition due to Mars low angle.

Mike

[laudropb]

Nice stuff Mike. Clouded out for the last 3 days.