Posts Made By: Paul Kammueller

I should qualify this by saying that seeing was really pretty bad in that the air was very unsteady and while Mars' closeness now makes a lot of detail visible, a lot of details were very fleeting and 'glimpsy'. But I'm sure I saw a dot near the NE limb (far left, lower half of sketch). Could that be Olympus Mons, or just a speck of wishful thinking stuck on the eyepiece? Or just another feature, such as Propoutis, just a little badly placed? Is it even possible to see the volcanos directly as dark specks, or just indirect indications via orogenic clouds?

Again very 'swimmy' seeing since the mini-front of clouds passed over 2 days ago. But patience and brief flashes of steadiness made some sketching possible. But the now-severe glare from the moon washed out some of the very low contrast surface coloring of the northern hemisphere.

I think I saw several clouds -- one on the far E limb in the first sketch is somewhat suspect as I am starting to see a *lot* of limb haze here and there all around the planet. The one indicated on the far SW limb of the second sketch was only visible to me in green light -- would that be surface fog? The elongated one to the NE of that (in Eridania) was visible in blue light. The two north of that, on the NE edge of Mare Cimmerium were visible in red light so I'm wondering of those are dust clouds.

Also the north polar cap is now visible, fairly obviously so, and while I tried to draw it in both sketches it doesn't seem to have scanned well in the first image. Also its size appears rather exaggerated in the second sketch. May need to touch these up a bit more.

Habit: Making it a point to observe Mars almost every available clear night and do at least one sketch every time you do so.

Conditioning: When your body adapts to staying up late on nearly a nightly basis and you feel a sense of contentment every time an observing session is completed.

Addiction: When no matter how exhausted you are, even when you're making it a point to go to bed early to catch up on sleep because you're pooped out, you absolutely cannot fall asleep until you set up in the backyard and do at least one sketch of Mars.

I have a little problem here.

During the very close opposition of 1988 I was a geography major in college so I was into maps and such. Back then I set out to actually compile a couple of maps based on sketches done at the eyepiece of the 3" apo I had at the time.

The top map is made from the first 6 to 10 sketches I made, fairly early on in the apparition when relatively little detail was visible.

The second map was compiled from sketches done near peak opposition in 1988, again mostly with a 3" apo, with a few 'booster' sketches from an old 8" SCT. Note how canals disappeared and features were much more distinct.

The bottom sketch is compiled from the 31 finished sketches I've done so far with my 10" f/8, along with a tiny bit from two working sketches done just tonight.

I am here following the geographic convention of north at top, with proper left-right orientation, just so no one accuses me of being a newtonian chauvinist or anything.

Pros:
- More forgiving collimation, which often results in better 'real-world' performance on average
- Lack of coma means larger sharp, diffraction-limited field. This is particularly important if the scope is a dob as your target spends most of its time NOT in the center of the field.
- With longer focal lengths you can get high magnifications without having to use barlows, spendy ultra-short f.l. eyepieces or other such optical leverage that put more glass between you and your target.
- Longer scopes are easier to baffle effectively just because it's harder for light to sneak down a longer tube (or cloth-covered truss) which improves contrast.
- You can use a smaller secondary obstruction but IMHO this is probably the least important of long f.l. advantages.

Cons:
- Portability. Not a petty concern with the aperture & focal ratio you're considering!
- Eyepiece height on this bad boy will also not be a trivial matter. Safety First!

Whew! One sketch every hour on the hour for the last five hours. Practically nonstop Mars-staring and scribbling. I don't know if I hit the precise moment of opposition but am too satisfied and too tired to care now. I'm pooped and am now going to bed.

This whole last month or so has been just an absolute blast and I've never seen Mars like I have this summer. I am never gonna forget this opposition.

Hope everyone's having fun tonite!

Happy happy joy joy

This is kind of fun. Subdue the red and green components, maximize blue, fiddle with contrast and gamma a bit and you get a nice photo of the clouds and limb haze.

Closed in on Olympus, stretched it a bit and fiddle with a few things -- it's amazing how much you can actually make out on that mountain when you look close. I'm not sure about the orientation of the image with respect to the Viking photo, however.

Seeing was good so I pushed my dob to 20,000x (tracking was tough) when the Valley was near the limb so sun angles were good for shadow detail along the terminator.

Okay, okay, the truth is I snapped this shot while hiking in the Badlands and gave it a *slight* color adjustment. :-) But it stirs the imagination, doesn't it? Certain places exhibit a very 'otherworldly' appearance and feel, and the Badlands is definitely one of those places.

"Can you see the Milky Way with the naked eye?"

How many of you guys have gotten this question or something similar? I got it this weekend. From 40-50 year old acquaintances. It was right over our heads at the time when we were at a remote cabin. They had always thought it was just clouds or something. I had a great time giving them a theatrical hand-waving lesson in galactic geography at that point. Great fun.