Hi all,

A few of us (Gil, Rod, David and myself) went to Fremont Peak last night (4/13) to veiw the Moon, Mars and comet HB. There were bands of high thin clouds with some clear areas, the seeing was excellent.

I was using my AP 180mm f/9 EDT with 7mm Naglers and the AP/Zeiss bino viewer giving about 288x (the bino viewer increases the power by about 25%). David can describe the features better than I can but there was an amazing amount of detail. At one point just for fun I added the bino viewers barlow. It is either 2.8x or 3x. We were running over 800x and the image was still very good. Davids 8" Celestron was showing beautiful datail at over 400x. It could have gone higher too.

Mars was very interesting. I'll have to figure out what we were seeing. On the limb moving away from us (11 o'clock) there were 3 white spots. There was other detail near the pole (2 o'clock) and in the lower middle of the planet. (sorry I don't have much time right now I'm taking a lunch break from a week long class)

Rod's AP 180mm f/9 was also doing a beautiful job and Gil was taking photos of HB with his AP Traveler.

We left the Peak around mid-night.