Mars last night

by Paul Sterngold


I stayed up and watched for Mars until 2:30am last night. It cleared my local obscuring tree at about 2:00am. The seeing was pretty good (3.5/5) until about 2:20am. During that time, I observed with a 4" f/8 Takahashi refractor and a Brandon 8mm eyepiece at 100x, and the same with a Tak "vari-extender" with unknown amplification factor due to varying distance, probably about 2x. The southern polar cap was surprisingly large and very distinct, with a high-contrast black marking at its northern edge. I was not able to detect a northern polar cap. I suspected some other markings but the seeing went to crap before I could properly discern them. In addition, at 2:30am, the fog rolled in thick and furious, and Mars was no more.