Mars as we didn’t quite see it…

It’s not exactly as we saw it, but the Hubble took a gorgeous shot of Mars as it reached it’s closest proximity to mother earth.

So last night, a group of us grabbed our scopes and headed off looking for dark, clear skies. we ended up on the top of Mount Hamilton, pretty literally in the shadow of the Lick Observatory. I pulled out the etx-90 and a set of big binocs, my friend hauled out his Meade (my ETX would, basically, be his finder scope), and we spent some time celebrating our neighbor’s close visit.

Seeing was good. Despite the wind (which added a nasty jitter to the scopes), on my scope I was able to get a good disc, and make out some detail of the polar icecaps and some minor detail of the edging around Mons Olympus using a 12.5mm lens and an 80a filter (which gave me the best results). My friend’s sturdier and bigger scope allowed them to resolve out most of Olympus Mons and see some other surface detail.

Seeing survived about an hour, and then we had some moisture stream into the upper atmosphere and things degraded. We still experimented with filters and the like for a while, but the best views were the early ones.

We also had a great view of the brush fire in the easy bay hills, which was going great guns (unfortunately), and seemingly not at all knocked down for the evening. We were upwind of it and some ways away, but in the binocs, it was an amazing sight. And on top of that, the Milky Way was in full force, so we spent some time remembering what the sky looks like when you aren’t blinded by civilization around you…

All in all, an awesome, fun evening. After months of threatening, it was great to finally break out the scope, even if Mars isn’t the most dramatic planet, even when up close and personal. With a scope like the ETX, you don’t exactly get Hubble shots, something that can be a real disappointment to someone who doesn’t understand how this stuff really operates (my view of Mars was, more or less, about the size of the head of a match….).

So, when was the last time you saw the stars, anyway?

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