Mars - a reprise of the the 2022/23 apparition

[josefk]

I'm getting increasingly excited by the approach of Mars for this 2024/25 apparition and have had a couple of late night views already.

In anticipation of this seasons opportunities i've been looking back over the 2022/23 season and having a look at what went well, what didn't, etc. I made quite a few sketches in 2022/23 but at that time i knowingly disregarded the general advice to sketch in a 50mm circle and instead i tried to capture the tiny "as seen" impressions (some just more or less 1mm per 1"). Though they are nice memory prompts now that does make my sketches a bit rubbish in general terms. On the other hand they will be easy to improve on this time round 🙂 so there's one good learning.

Anyway while looking back over the last apparition and the tiny sketches and the observing notes i made then, i made myself this infographic - blame the cloudy evenings but it was fun making it anyway and brought everything nicely back to mind while doing so 😂. It doesn't include every observation but it is the memorable ones for me for one reason or another (though i did forget one other particularly enjoyable obs when Mars could be seen in the same FOV as Messier 1). Mars is scaled to its apparent size at the time of the observation except the occultation and conjunction.

The blobby Cassegrain view early in the apparition set a chain of events in motion that ended in the TOA-130 sitting on my mount so that was nice!  Thanks Mars! However I think my favourite Mars experience during the apparition was its early morning occultation by the moon in Dec-22 viewed principally through binoculars and i quite enjoyed the conjunction with Venus in the summer of 2023 also through binoculars.

This 24/25 season is started below and though Mars is still small i know i have more skills/tools to apply this time around and as Mars grows closer. I can't wait...