Mars

Ok I need comfort and pity: Last night the sky appeared clear to the naked eye. I let my 10" Orion XT cool for an hour then i tried to look at Mars with a 4.5 mm eyepiece. Should have provided about a 250 magnification. The image was so wavy that all I could see was a faint, intermittent view of a dark band at the equator and the hint of some white on the bottom edge. Is anyone having better luck with their images? Should the view be better at 250? I know that is a loaded question and my success or lack thereof could be collimation skill or seeing, but I checked the collimation with my laser. The sky looked so clear to the naked eye that I felt it impossible for the seeing to be off. Will someone tell me that 250 is too low power to see any real detail before I have to go knutz??

Philip,

You have my pity, (and understanding)

I know seeing conditions vary depending on the area but from what I have seen in the last couple of months, and in particular, the last couple of weeks, seeing here in the NE of the continent has been very lousy. On clear nights, turbulence has been quite destructive and the few clear nights I have seen have not been good for anything but the lowest of low power viewing. October has been anything but good. (at least there are no bugs!) Check the clear sky clock in advance, wait for Mars to get high up in the sky, and do a simple star test to check seeing. Then if conditions are right, look at Mars again.

have fun
dan

The conditions will vary and so will the view. Sometimes you just can not get an image worth seeing.

Philip,

The last couple of nights here on the Texas Gulf Coast have been very clear like yours. I have a 10" Orion Atlas and a 5" Intes Micro MN56. Tuesday night I had the 10" out around 10:00pm to view Mars. Scope had more than an hour of cool down time and the highest image magnification acceptable to my eyes was 171x (7mm). Anything higher was exactly as you described (very wavy and almost no image detail). I was disappointed that on such a crystal clear night that was it. So on Wednesday night I got the 5" scope out which has great optics and typically handles higher magnification per inch than the 10". Allowed 2 hours for cool down time and at around 10:00pm viewed Mars. And just like the night before the highest image magnification acceptable to my eyes was 171x (12.5mm + 2.8 Barlow). I agree with previous post regarding seeing/transparency plus the fact that in my case Mars was still relativity low in the eastern sky. By the way the image detail at 171x was decent.

Richard Dayries

A helpful indicator of the turbulence in a clear sky is looking at bright stars near the zenith or the object you want to look at and see how much the stars "twinkle". Much twinkling, much turbulence.

Philip, We should start a club up because I seen the same thing with my XT10. I tryed many ep's and found my Orion 8mm Stratus gave me the best view of Mars that night. There is nothing wrong with your scope, just conditions. On a few good nights I had my scope up 400x viewing Saturn, but it rare to get a good night like that.