Mars, New Years Eve

[Brinders]

Amazing views of Mars tonight: best I have ever seen!

Although still a relatively small disc, I saw more detail tonight through the Celestron CPC 925 GPS than any scope I have ever owned previously. The north polar ice cap clearly stood out frorn the orange and gray background of the rest of the planet.

The sky tonight was clear steady and transparent depsite the full moon. I would have tried imaging Mars with the Neximage, but being new years eve I felt I had to spend sometime with the Mrs!, especially since I had spent a good portion of the early evening taking photos of the full moon with my DSLR attached to the CPC.

Got to say tonights view of the God of War will stay with me forever.

Best view was with the Hyperion 8mm, Skywatcher 2x 2" ED barlow and a No. 15 Deep Yellow filter - amazing

Happy New Year fellow SGL members,

Brinders

[dweller25]

Hello Brinders, Happy New Year.

I was out too and as you say seeing was really good.

I posted a drawing over on the sketch section.

Hope it stays clear tonight - I will stay out a bit longer. Had a bit too much to drink last night, drunk in charge of a telescope is not a good thing :-)

Clear skies.

[Towa]

I too saw the New Year in by obseving Mars and what a sight, it was fantastic.

Using my 76mm f/16 refractor, the features seen were the North polar cap with Lowell band, Utopia, Syrtis Major, Tyrrhenum

and Hellas, which seemed fainter than usual.

Also detected some much fainter darker markings to the north of the Syrtis Major which formed a Y shape.

Several bright patches were seen, one of which was in Libya.

[Brinders]

Hello Brinders, Happy New Year.

I was out too and as you say seeing was really good.

I posted a drawing over on the sketch section.

Hope it stays clear tonight - I will stay out a bit longer. Had a bit too much to drink last night, drunk in charge of a telescope is not a good thing :-)

Clear skies.

Hi David, happy New Year.

I saw the weather forecast earlier and there is a chance of clear skies in my area tonight, so I'll give imaging Mars a go if the seeing is as good as it was last night.

I stayed off the drink last night (for a change). As you say its not wise to be drunk in charge of a telescope!

I'll take a look at your sketch in a mo. I recognise Tower's description of the Y shape: matches what I saw at the eyepiece.

All the best for 2010.

Brinders

[Lowstar]

Not being an avid Planetary observer i have ignored Mars, to my shame, for a while now. The reason being i couldn`t resolve it from a boiling, multi coloured blob:D

However as Brinders has already mentioned the planet was looking very good last night. The disc was definable and indeed the white polar cap along with the grey areas on the surface. I was pretty happy but the -6 degrees c tempered my enthusiasm....eventually.

I was using an 8" Orion Dob, an Orion Shorty barlow lens with a 14mm XW Pentax. I`ve been thinking about a planetary eyepiece but i couldn`t spend the big bucks on a Pentax right now. The TMB is cheap and cheerful but is it any good? The internet isn`t much of a help as everybody has their own ideas. "Less glass = more light", "you get what you pay for".......