Syrtis Major & Hellas 25/9/2020

[mikeDnight]

Quite a nice view of Mars from last night despite wobbly seeing.

[RobertI]

Superb sketches. So the second sketch is at a lower magnification but with binoviewers?

Edited September 26, 2020 by RobertI

[JeremyS]

Lovely, @mikeDnight!

[mikeDnight]

12 minutes ago, RobertI said:

Superb sketches. So the second sketch is at a lower magnification but with binoviewers?

Thanks Robert! Yes, there was some thin cloud forming above me and its edge was just tickling Mars at times, so the seeing was wobbly. The 5mm, which usually gives a lovely view just lost it a bit, but when I used the barlowed binoviewer and 25mm Parks Gold the detail became noticeably sharper. Also, despite the magnification being lower, the planet looked larger. Not sure why!?

[RobertI]

55 minutes ago, mikeDnight said:

Also, despite the magnification being lower, the planet looked larger. Not sure why!?

Interesting, I made a similar comment a while ago when using my 10x50 binocular and my 10x50 finder-scope, things just looked bigger through the binocular. I think it my be an illusion from using two eyes, but a nice one. 

[laudropb]

Another lovely set of sketches Mike. Transparency was great here last night but the seeing was poor. Only able to go to 120x but in the occasional steady spells Syrtis stood out well, but not much else.

[paulastro]

Lovely sketches Mike.  The first one was about the limit of what I could see in very poor seeing.

[dweller25]

Excellent drawing Mike👍

[globular]

Lovely once again.

[RobertI]

10 hours ago, RobertI said:

11 hours ago, mikeDnight said:

Also, despite the magnification being lower, the planet looked larger. Not sure why!?

Interesting, I made a similar comment a while ago when using my 10x50 binocular and my 10x50 finder-scope, things just looked bigger through the binocular. I think it my be an illusion from using two eyes, but a nice one.

I tracked down the report where I originally noted this effect, this is what I wrote:

"I noticed that the view through the 60mm scope seemed to be much smaller (ie: lower mag) than the bins, even though they were both 10x. So I looked through the bins with one eye only, and the view was similarly small. But when opening the second eye to get stereo vision, the view suddenly increased in size dramatically, almost like doubling the magnification. I know this is a optical illusion, but just shows why bins provide such good views. Does the same hold true of binocular viewers for scopes, or is the effect less marked because there is only one objective?".

I'm surprised this is not a more commonly recognised effect?