Mars: 22nd February 2021

[dweller25]

Turned the 4” refractor onto Mars this evening at 18:00UT and was surprised to see dark surface markings on a sharp disk - albeit on a very small disk at x160.

As an experiment I changed to my highest power eyepiece giving x384 and was surprised even more that the view was still sharp and Syrtis Major could clearly be seen in the middle of the planet, along with some limb haze too.

I only went out to look at the Moon - which was great - as I thought Mars was long past showing anything other than an oval fuzzy orange blob !!

[globular]

I too was surprised by some lovely sharp views of Mars, with some surface colouring, when I was last out with my telescope on the 11th Feb.
It was nice to get reacquainted with it - I miss the amazing sessions we had with Mars last year. 

[John]

Yep - once the seeing settled, there were markings on that tiny gibbous disk

It is small now though, even at 300x. Just 6.7 arc seconds. You could fit that twice into the gap between Mizar A and Mizar B.