Saturn, Jupiter, and to my great surprise: Mars!

[ONIKKINEN]

I already complained in the what did you see tonight thread about saturday night, which was ruined, but as a very positive surprise the next night just now was crystal clear and with good seeing! The 8'' newton (that was once a VX8) and an AZ-EQ6 in my car and off i go.

Started at about 1am local time with Saturn that lies at 14 degrees above the horizon. The scope was still cooling down at this point but i gave it some time and eventually the boiling stopped and i could pull the cooling fan plug to stabilize the view. And to my surprise i was welcomed with skies that allowed the Pentax XW7 (in a 2.5x barlow) to show more than an XW10, so 321x instead of 250x. Not sure i have seen more than a handful of skies like this, certainly not while the planets were also around to be seen so very excited at this point. Also i just wanted to use the new to me XW7 so it was staying in the barlow whether it was the best eyepiece for the job or not 😆.

Saturn showed me the best view i have yet to see, with the cassini division along with some very low contrast banding to be seen on the planet itself. I am left wondering how much better the view would be if Saturn was just a few degrees higher as i am only getting temporary windows of calm with the low altitude which it resides in but that is a discovery for another year at my latitude of 60N. Before moving on from Saturn i threw in a camera in the barlow and took some recordings, and the rest of the session was about 50/50 recording and observing. I dont think the recordings turned out great but im absolutely not going to sift through that pile of pixels tonight.

Off to Jupiter with the XW7 and i am greeted with a very obvious great red spot, almost in the middle of the disk. Best view of the GRS i have yet to see for sure, the couple times i have seen the GRS it was not that "great" and obvious, but this time it was impossible to not notice and sort of staring me straight in the eye. The main atmospheric band was serrated and at times swirly across the entire disk, edge to edge with uncountable minor "pockets" of detail to be seen here and there. The smaller band was also quite obvious, but here there was less to see around the edges and just occasionally did some kind of structure peek through. Closer to the poles from the bands i saw many very delicate and low contrast bands with what appeared to be "spots" on them. Not well resolved, but these kept popping in and out of my periphery when observing, i would guess these are some kind of mini cyclones between the different bands. Overall Jupiter appeared very busy which was sort of new to me.

At this point i am considering wrapping up as its coming around to 3AM, but since Mars has just crossed the 20 degree altitude mark i decided to just have a look at that too, still with the XW7. Did not expect anything since its still less than 9'' in diameter (according to stellarium). At first didn't see anything really. It appeared as a not quite round very bright and compact disk. Atmospheric dispersion was extremely obvious with separated colours at the extreme ends of the disk and that coupled with the extreme brightness made me almost give up and call it a night. But i figured i would try a #25 Celestron Mars filter and see if it shows me something in the disk. And to my great surprise this filter that up until this moment has been almost entirely useless worked GREAT with Mars. I actually almost straight away spotted some kind of surface detail on Mars. I think it helped with the atmospheric dispersion too, since only deep red light is getting through. Nicely dimmed the image down also, which i feel like helped immensely, perhaps i could have pumped up the power to ludicrous X to also dim the image, but i ran out of glass to do that. Did not spot any light features, but some kind of dark band in the shape of a sideways letter Y was very apparent. Too apparent to be some seeing anomaly for sure. I just made a quick sketch in MS paint that represents what i saw although much smaller in the eyepiece:

I then tried to take off the filter and see if i could still spot the structure, and i kind of did now that i new where to look, but it wasn't nearly as well defined when its hiding behind dispersion and a very compact bright disk. The Mars filter is definitely seeing some more use after this experience!

Very satisfied with the night, first time seeing anything at all on Mars, and the best views i have seen on Jupiter and Saturn so far. The takeaway here was that Mars really does need a deranged amount of power to give anything at the moment, but given the right circumstances it actually can!

Edited August 1, 2022 by ONIKKINEN

[Knighty2112]

Nice report. Yeah, weather been terrible over here in the UK for last 3 to 4 weeks, so not done any observing myself for a while which does get very frustrating. Looking forward to viewing Mars again with my Celestron Mars filter, especially as Mars gets bigger during the rest of the year. This filter was bought just for the sole purpose of using on Mars, which when skies allow does a very good job in teasing out details on its surface. 

[Knighty2112]

BTW: here’s the view of Mars from Skysafari which matches pretty closely what you saw in your scope with your Mars filter.

[Les Ewan]

Great report.😎 I didn't see the Red Spot myself last night as I didn't start observing until 03:00BST,so it must have rotated out of view but I did get a fairly steady observation of Jupiter with my Skywatcher 400p . In fact I manged to telescopically bag Venus ,Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune within 20 minutes as it was getting light. Venus looked particularly beautiful through 7X50 binoculars in the brightening sky. I also cheated a bit with Uranus and Neptune as I used goto to locate them on this occasion.

[Les Ewan]

Hi Gus,

I always see a leaping cat when Syrtis Major , Sinus Sabaeus  and Mare Serpentis are near the centre of the disc.

1 hour ago, Knighty2112 said:

BTW: here’s the view of Mars from Skysafari which matches pretty closely what you saw in your scope with your Mars filter.

I always see a leaping cat when Syrtis Major, Sinus Sabaeus and Mare Serpentis  are near the centre of the disc!

[Stu]

Excellent report of what was clearly a great night @ONIKKINEN, enjoyed reading that. It’s been quite a while since I had a decent planetary session, must get my lazy bones out of bed at some point soon 👍

[Les Ewan]

Hi Stu,

Its certainly worth while a whole parade of planets around 03:30.😎

I didn't see much detail on Mars using a power of 144X the biggest feature is the distinctly gibbous disc.

[ED Splitter]

Nice report. That Pentax is working well for you. What Barlow are you using with it?

I am off to price up a Mars filter. 

[ONIKKINEN]

3 hours ago, Knighty2112 said:

BTW: here’s the view of Mars from Skysafari which matches pretty closely what you saw in your scope with your Mars filter.

Well ill be damned, looks very familiar!

[ONIKKINEN]

1 hour ago, ED Splitter said:

Nice report. That Pentax is working well for you. What Barlow are you using with it?

I am off to price up a Mars filter. 

Thanks, yes the Pentax eyepieces are fantastic. Not sure i can go back to other eyepieces once i have gotten used to them...

I have this great value TS 2.5x APO barlow:https://www.teleskop-express.de/shop/product_info.php/info/p55_TS-Optics-Optics-TSB251-2-5x-Barlow-Lens--1-25-inch---apochromatic-triplet-design.html

I have mixed feelings about this one., but mostly because i like it and would love to like it more. Optically and mechanically its very nice, both the eyepiece side and telescope side are well machined and this thing holds orientation sturdily. But the telesocpe side lacks filter thread, and the barlow element is some weird proprietary thread, so i cant screw that onto anything else. Its also quite short and requires a bit of in travel of the focuser so not all setups will reach focus with that one.

[ONIKKINEN]

2 hours ago, Stu said:

Excellent report of what was clearly a great night @ONIKKINEN, enjoyed reading that. It’s been quite a while since I had a decent planetary session, must get my lazy bones out of bed at some point soon 👍

Thanks stu, it was indeed a very rare night with how steady it was. I dont expect to get these very often. A couple of months and the planets are observable in more palatable times of day so there should be more chances for "normal" sleepers as the year progresses, i on the other hand go to sleep at 4-5am anyway so not much sleep lost on these odd hour sessions.

[ONIKKINEN]

3 hours ago, Les Ewan said:

Great report.😎 I didn't see the Red Spot myself last night as I didn't start observing until 03:00BST,so it must have rotated out of view but I did get a fairly steady observation of Jupiter with my Skywatcher 400p . In fact I manged to telescopically bag Venus ,Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune within 20 minutes as it was getting light. Venus looked particularly beautiful through 7X50 binoculars in the brightening sky. I also cheated a bit with Uranus and Neptune as I used goto to locate them on this occasion.

The GRS was moving closer to the limb at 3AM my time, so would have been 1AM for you. It probably had just barely rotated away when you got the chance to look.

Venus i have yet to see, but im not sure if its actually possible with a scope (at least decent views) from 60N. I have seen it naked eye just a couple of times, but its always licking the horizon at dawn.

[russ]

That's a great report. Mars is a real surprise at the moment. I have a #25 filter and never thought to use it the other morning but will do on the next session.