MarsPosted By Richard Dayries |
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
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
