by Matt Tarlach
Had a nice look at Mars last night in my new 6", from a good site with limiting mag better than 6. Seeing varied often but around 1AM PDT there was a steady enough interval to make a decent sketch. At 240x in the 6" newt with a 23A filter, I got some good detail on Syrtis Major and Hellas, along with surrounding dark areas. Hellas appeared to hold a bright white or light yellow cloud...at 0800 UT it didn't quite fill the basin as there was a rim of orange visible between the edge of the circular cloud and the concentric basin rim. It appeared to be brightest and largest closer to sunrise on the region, shrinking somewhat as the Martian day wore on...but seeing early in my session was pretty bad and I'm not totally confident of this progression. But it was definitely bright and white or light yellow. Many clouds along the rim, too.
I also had a very nice view of Seyfert's Sextet (Hickson 79) in Randy Muller's 18". At first we could only see three galaxies for sure, but I happened to have a photo of the group in my box and by referring to it we were able to locate the other 3. I was able to glimpse the most difficult galaxy only perhaps 25% of the time with averted vision at ~300x. Seeing was the main problem, rather than dimness: turbulent air causes the various members of this very compact group to merge into an amorphous blob. This is a very interesting and challenging object for large scopes at good sites!