First good views of Mars

[Beyond_Vision]

With it being Full Moon and no chance of imaging I decided to dedicate the whole night to Mars and the Moon. I set up my 12" Lightbridge around dusk and waited for Mars to clear the hedge line. Initially it was a bit disappointing but I kept nipping out every hour and once it had climbed high after 10.00pm, more and more detail could be seen. Beforehand I had only ever seen a small featureless red disc but this time the ice cap was obvious with a dark marking above it (Newtonian inverted view) and dark areas running across the top half. I was using a Meade 5000 9mm eyepiece and a Meade APO 140 2x barlow giving 333x magnification and Moon filter which seemed to help. I finished off the evening looking around the limb of the Moon which was amazing I could see a central peak of a crater or possibly the far wall standing out as if it was suspended in mid air

Regards

Kevin

[russ]

Sounds like you had a really nice view Kevin. There was some amazing detail on view last night.

Russ