Huygens' Mars Challenge

If the Dutch astronomer, Christian Huygens, were to appear ghostly ;-) before us today with a challenge: can you see Mars' Syrtis Major? On Nov. 28, 1659, he turned his self-constructed 2-inch (51mm) telescope to Mars and made his first drawing (and discovery) with his self-constructed Huygens eyepiece yielding 50x of Syrtis Major! At the time, Mars was only around 17 arcsec in size and it was probably quite low on the horizon at his latitude (about same
altitude was where Mars is today). Now remember this was before the time of the achromat!
http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/online.bks/mars/chap02.htm

OK, surely your whatever small telescope (or Light Cup) can do it too, couldn't it? Slap/Slap on both cheeks :-@. Mars is now around 16.75 arcsec and Syrtis Major is well position for the Americas west coast. Alas, I don't have a Huygens eyepiece, but I guess my 20mm Tele Vue Plossl (44x with my TV-102 Light Cup) will have to do (I've got a 51mm aperture mask ready also).

How about it?

Ron B[ee]

Well Ron, don't you think Huygens would have used a larger, more sophisticated device had he had one available? I mean, we don't have to look at Mars or anything else through a 2" refractor, much as we must admire his accomplishment. Sort of like the Wright Brothers. Nobody who flies seriously flies around in 14hp biplanes anymore, with the exception of ultralight pilots, who IMHO tend to be seriously deficient in good judgement. But that's off the subject. Unless one wants to recreate Huygens' feat for the sake of anachronistic interest, why not use the technology that's available to us? Among my collection of telescopes, I have an old 60mm Tasco, which might be similar to what Huygens had. Do I prefer using that over any other scope? No-o-o-o.

Howard K