by Randy Muller
I spent some time in my backyard Tuesday night getting some nice views of the moon and Mars.
When I first set up, I could not believe my good fortune when I immediately noticed 3 stars marching on the dark limb. The first one, TYC 1338-840-1 (HDE 262394), was not that bright, and winked out at about 10:13. The next two (TYC 1338-2013-1 and TYC 1338-1472-1) disappeared about the same time at about 10:15. I only saw one of them disappear, because some clouds rolled in at an inopportune time. They were rolling out when I saw the occultation at 10:15.
I saw no more immediate ones as I scanned around the limb, so I looked at some features near the terminator. When I scanned the limb a little while later, I noticed yet another one (GSC-1338-0448), which disappeared at about 10:24. By this time, the sky had deteriorated a little bit, and the star was pretty fuzzy.
(TYC is the Tycho catalog, HDE is the Henry Draper catalog and GSC is the Hubble Guide Star Catalog -- my planetarium program [SkyMap] doesn't list the SAO catalog).
I spent some time looking at the Apollo 17 lunar landing site (chart 25 in Antonin Rukl's "Atlas of the Moon") in the Taurus mountains, near the crater Littrow. I never realized how rugged this area was until now. I was surprised to find this site comparable to the Apollo 15 site near Hadley Rille.
The Apollo 17 site is near a large mountain, Mons Vitruvius, which was casting a long shadow, as was the lesser mountain immediately west (selenographic) of the landing site.
Looking at the map now, I'm disappointed to report that I did not see Rimae Littrow.
The deep crater Roemer was very prominent as a pitch black spot with a bright central peak.
The moon was getting lower and the seeing was getting worse, so I took a break to wait for Mars to rise. I returned outside around midnight, or shortly afterwards.
Mars was showing considerable detail in moments of good seeing, which were few and far between, and growing fewer with passing time, during the time I was looking. I made the following observations with my 10mm eyepiece at 310x.
The first most obvious feature I noticed was Syrtis Major, a notably dark, contrasty triangular shaped spot, very near the meridian of the disk.
On one side of it, extending to the limb, was the large bright area known as Hellas. There were two other much smaller bright spots: One on the opposite limb from Hellas -- the north polar cap -- and the other also on the limb at a position of about 4 o'clock, if Hellas was was at 12. (I was using a star diagonal, so the image is upright, but mirror reversed.) I believe this 3rd light spot was Elysium.
As I continued to observe, I noticed two small dark areas between Syrtis Major and the NPC. One was probably Utopia, and the other may have been Stymphallus Lacus.
Gradually, I noticed that there was a dark area extending N and E (areographic) from Syrtis Major, along Hellas, and toward Elysium. These areas are Iapygia and Mare Tyrrhenum.
This feature reminded me of a giant smiling mouth, and the two small dark areas were reminiscent of eyes.
This apparition of Mars is much better for me than the last one in 1997. At that time, I didn't know how to collimate my scope, and Mars was always just a featureless orange blur with ghosts.
| Date | April 20, 1999 10:00-12:34pm (0500-0734 Apr 21 UTC) |
|---|---|
| Location | Backyard, in Roseville, CA 121W 16', 38N 44' |
| Instrument | Intes MK-91 9" f/13.6 Maksutov-Cassegrain |
| Oculars | 10, 17, 26mm plossls |
| Seeing | 7/10 very wavy and somewhat fuzzy |
| Transparency | 7/10 intermittent clouds |