Montebello Mars 06/19/01

by Jim Feldhouse


Takahashi FS-128/GM-8
Mainly Pentax 7mm & shorty barlow

1st light (off-balcony) for mine FS128 (previously owned by Ray Gralak & Alan Nelms) I spent the night at MB looking at Mars from 11:30 until after 1am. I am so very glad I grabbed the unopened box that contained my new 7mm pentax, this is a really nice eyepiece in the fs-128, I used it almost the whole time viewing Mars.

I am far from a Mars expert, don't even have the May issue of S&T. Nor do I know how to predict what orientation Mars would be in my view of it. (I am very new to looking at Mars, and to operating this scope.)

There was a faint double star about 6-8 Mars lengths away the whole night.

I used the MarsPreviewerII program James mentioned when I got home, and its south pole up view matched what I was looking at. To the north (bottom) I was able to see 2,3 tenuous dark appendages coming up off a small dark expanse. I was able to consistantly make out 2 appendages, and occassionally 3. These would appear to be, Nodus Alcyonius / Casius & Hyblaeus Extension I am not sure which of the 1st pair I consistently saw, but I did see all three a couple of times. The dark expanse the seemed to sprout from was mainly the Utopia area.

Also visible on the southern Martian hemisphere was horn of a crescent shaped dark expanse reaching across roughly 2/3rds of the upper (southern) half of the planet. This dark area appears to have several named sections, the biggest of which is Mare Cimmerium.

I mainly used my 7mm pentax/shorty barlow combination for 280x occassionally going up to 560x with a powermate(5x). The 280x was giving me the most details, I was using that around the transit when the seeing was best. During some good seeing moments, I am quite sure I saw the thin whitening of both poles, opposite each other. The reason I state the obvious, "opposite each other" is because the MarsPreviewer shows a big white area labeled Penius/Hellas that was present in the southeastern (upperight) quadrant. I did not note this "white" area. The general color of the Martian surface besides the dark areas, was a ruddy-light-light-orange.

I occassionally used a #29 red filter, but I didn't think it brought out the dark features enough to warrant its use. #29 might be too dark.

I am still learning to use my new GM-8 mount, I was able to get the GOTO working, and the tracking working, but not at the same time. I suspect user error.