by Jason Hatton
We had a good first view of the Mountains of Mitchell on Mars Saturday night from my backyard near Palo Alto California.
I also had a good view of this feature detached from the martian south polar cap last Saturday night too. The seeing conditions were excellent. Observing with a friend & his 10" SCT we were able to visually spot the Mountains of Mitchell quite easily. A lot of fine detail was again visible on the surface of the planet, with Sinus Sabeus & Syrtis Major being prominent. Also the north polar hood / haze was quite obvious, along with quite a strong blue haze on the sunrise limb over Mare Erythaeum & a fainter haze over Syrtis Major
We observed & imaged the planet for over 4h, which allowed us to see a fair proportion of the planet as it rotated - all the way from Syrtis Major to edge of Solis Lacus.
We got some nice images which I haven't finished annotating yet, but here is one from the sequence, which shows the Mountains of Mitchell & limb hazes nicely;
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/hattonjasonp/planets/Mars-7Sep03-0736UT.jpg
For those of you who are interested, I've now put my other recent images of Mars on my website;
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/hattonjasonp/planets/2003_mars_apparition.htm
