Stunning Mars

[lguise]

Last night (March 16th) we had a group of youngsters from local schools visiting the observatory and as is often the case the cloud rolled in about 30mins before they arrived! We could still just see Mars so we swung the 16" on to it and my word it was absolutely stunning! We often use filters to control the brightness but the thin cloud was doing an even better job and was very even. The atmosphere was incredibly steady, which for us looking South over Bedford is rare. We were easily able to use a 6mm eyepiece at just under x700

It was the iconic view of Mars and cetainly the best view I have seen this opposition. We tried to image with a Meade LPI but the light level was so reduced by the cloud that we could not capure anything useful with a good image scale, the exposure was over 2 secs.

With Mars receeding fast this may well have been our last chance for such a view.

It was the only object the youngsters saw but they left very excited and to be honest so were we!

Linton & Phil

www.bedfordschool.org.uk/observatory

[yeti monster]

It's great opening fresh eyes to the wonders above, regardless of age. With younger minds behind those eyes the effect of being shown something like Mars or Saturn will be very long lasting and influential indeed.

I have found thin cloud cover to be an excellent lunar filter but not had the EPs to make Mars a worthwhile target yet, hopefully, fingers crossed and touchy wood, that will all be changing very shortly.

[NickH]

That's a fantastic report...and knowing you Linton, I can imagine how fantastic that view must have been, and for the kids too...great one...great outreach!

[DarkerSky]

Great stuff Linton. x700 magnifcation is impressive. The air was so unsettled just a couple of nights previous too. We must get our heads together about organising some daisy banks observing for Bedford AS. I'll send you a PM

[Peter Drew]

Nice one Linton, sometimes I wish I hadn't moved up from Bedford!, the weather and seeing have been poor in the NW during this Mars opposition. A few nights ago under similar conditions that you described, I was able to use around 600X with good results on our 16", 400X was far too low. Testing a recent thread re high mags I tried 1200X, details were still seen but not so well defined.