| Observer | Dave Staples |
|---|---|
| Date | 25 April 2001 |
| Time | 0230-0400 PDT 0930-1100 UTC |
| Location | Santa Rosa, Ca 38°16'N 122°40'W |
| Weather | Cool comfortable and beautiful |
| Equip. | C8, 32mm, 26mm, 10mm, 7.5mm plossls, 2x barlow |
| Seeing | 9/10 |
| Trans. | 8/10 |
Last night I set up the scope around 8pm to start cooling down and went back inside. The sky was clear as a bell and it was warm and muggy. After dinner I came back out and started looking at Jupiter, it was dancing a jig (observing over my roof) but I was able to watch Europa disappear behind the disk around 9:30. After that I hit the sack to wait for Mars to come up.
Around came 2:30 and I rolled out of bed to a mumble of "now I know you are crazy" from my wife. One good thing about this is, dark adaptation doesn't take long. I looked out the window and there was Mars, shining bright and steady to the south.
First I checked collimation on a bright star. At 541x, in focus, there were three steady perfectly symmetrical, centered, diffraction rings. I decided not to make any adjustments. I'm not sure but from everything I have read and been told, this points to the best seeing I could possibly hope for from my backyard. Transparency also seemed to be very good as well, as I saw the Milky Way meandering along below Vega. At first I thought it was high clouds, but after checking my planisphere, I'm sure it was the Milky Way.
Mars at 78x showed up as little more than a bright orange disk with maybe a hint of dark surface splotches. I popped in my barlow (156x)and started seeing more detail, a hint of whiteness at the southern pole and distinct dark patches on the surface. I decided to try my 10mm (406x with barlow) and was rewarded with a beautiful steady view with the South polar cap/polar clouds clearly visible and hints of clouds around the north pole.
Surface features were now clearly visible. From the Mars map in the May S&T, it seems that I was seeing Mare Tyrrhenum/Hesperia region in the south with Sirtis Major visible. In the north I think I was picking out the Utopia area. Since this is the first time I have observed Mars, I not entirely sure of the geography. If anyone was observing about the same time, maybe they could confirm my observations.
I tried my highest power (7.5mm 541x with barlow) and was able to make out more cloud structure to the north but not much more surface detail.
In between peering at Mars, I spent time just looking around. I haven't been up when the summer/late spring constellations make their appearance and I have never been good at (never taken the time before) identifying the summer sky. So it was nice to just sit there and get my bearings, a bit of a shame to not take advantage of such steady skies more thoroughly. Come from not knowing my way around and a lack of sufficiently detailed charts.
I was thoroughly impressed with Mars and plan on catching up with him more often as he gets closer over the next month or so.
There I go again, thought this was going to be a short report but I look up and there are a couple of pages. I've got to learn to be more concise.