Saturday night I was able to get in a nice observing session with Mars,the unfiltered view in my 6" achro at 200x looked much like the view of the moon with the naked eye with whitish-yellow planet with darker blue-grey splothes,of course my achro may just turn everthing somewhat bluish, anyway, the south polar cap was small but bright and the hellas basin was very bright almost like a second polar cap,after finishing the sketch, I was shocked when i checked the Mars previewer and saw that Sinus Meridini was near the meridian and I hadn't noticed it, it was very easy to see in 2003,but mars was much larger than than it is now.
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