Morning Mars with 127 SW Mak

[Nik271]

The advantage of Autumn - no need to get up early for a morning observation, it's still pitch dark at 6am 🙂 

This morning I observed Mars at 6:30am with my 127 (120 really) SW Mak and the seeing, while not great, allowed for quite a lot of detail to be seen at  x185.

Initially as usual Mars was blindingly bright in the eyepiece but after a couple of minutes I started to see detail. There were large dark area both in the south and north of the disc and I guess these were Mare Acidalium and Mare Erythraeum. The north polar hood was showing well and in the south polar region there seemed to be some haze. It's difficult to be sure, Mars is so tiny even at x180 and the seeing was not the best.

I found this excellent annotated map of Mars from 2020 from Pic du Midi for reference:

At 7am it was getting light and before packing I looked at the Moon, some good detail was showing, especially the terraced wall of Maurolycus in the light of setting sun, and the clock hands of Rima Hyginus. 

Yet again I'm very impressed with my 127 Mak at planetary observing, for its size and weight it shows so much!

Clear skies and good seeing!

Nik

Edited October 16, 2022 by Nik271
typo corrected