Mars Again

[mikeDnight]

At the risk of becoming boring I thought I'd post yet another sketch of Mars.

The seeing was truly terrible on the evening of the 1st June, and when I first looked through the eyepiece at Mars there was nothing but a boiling, featureless disk. I almost gave up at first glance but thought better of it, as the alternative would be to watch Pointless, Fifteen to One and The Chase that the wife had recorded. I stuck it out in the hope that there would be fleeting moments of steady seeing. Soon I managed to detect bright areas around the limb. These drew my attention to the much more subtle shaded areas. Over time even the orange/orcha lowlands began to reveal slight differences in the intensity of their colour.

The attached sketches show last night's observation, which took me about 15mins to see all the detail, along with the previous two observations of the same region. It nicely illustrates the difference between reasonable seeing and Yuk! Looking at the drawings from right to left you may be able to see the same features as the Martian globe rotates from 4 oclock towards 10 o'clock.

Mike ☺

[xtreemchaos]

great drawing mate, thats about the same as i saw at 11pm on the 1st with AR127L, 2xed barlow 15mm ler. thanks charl.

[niallk]

Not boring - superb & interesting ! Very cool to have the series of sketches over three nights running showing rotation 

[colin2007]

Superb drawings. 

I thought it was a no brainer between watching TV  or remain outside observing!!

[Stu]

Lovely sketches Mike. I too saw it at a similar time, didn't spend that long on it so didn't see much of the detail you noted but I saw the same basic dark markings.

[Grotemobile]

Nothing here on the south coast. Wall to wall clouds.

Good drawing. Be nice to see any thing.

[t0nedude]

At the risk of sounding boring as well, I thought I'd post again about how great your sketches are Mike..

Tony.