Mars

tones

tones

compulsive cantater
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Has anyone had a peek? Even in 7x binoculars it comes out as a discernible disc. I had the telescope (Celestron 4" Schmidt-Cassegrain) out at 3.30 the other morning. In the big eyepiece (10mm) I could pick out some surface detail, but even then it was too low in the atmospheric haze to see the polar caps, and I had to keep adjusting as it wandered rapidly out of the eyepiece (you really do notice that the earth turns) - must get that motor drive operational... However, I intend to have another go. Closest approach was yesterday (27 August), but it'll stay good for most of September. Don't miss it, it won't be this close again for a l-o-n-g time!
 
Too cloudy across much of the UK for clear views Wednesday & Thursday. It's been the same story for lots of recent astral events. Bugger :(
 
Originally posted by Hex Spurt
Too cloudy across much of the UK for clear views Wednesday & Thursday. It's been the same story for lots of recent astral events. Bugger :(
Click to expand...

I was lucky. At 3.30-4.15 viewing conditions were pretty good. At 5.50, as I was getting ready to head for work, it poured! Sky looks pretty gloomy here too at the moment.
 
Does the close proximity of Mars likely to increase interferance in HiFi ?

Does Russ Andrews or someone similar has special interconnects, speaker cables or soem gizzmo to solve this problem?

:kneel:
 
max,
i suggest you go to your local supermarket and procure some tin foil. fasion yourself a conical head mounted mars ray deflector using the tin foil and paint a red d on it to denote it a 'red planet' deflector. wear this at all times even when not listening to your hi-fi as the mars rays can build up in your brain and cause distortion at all times.

cheers

julian
 
About 3 weeks ago (when Mars was already very close) I had dinner at a friend of mines house in Lisbon who's an amateur astronomer and he has a huge reflector telescope with computer controlled and motorised tripod :eek: and in that thing (don't know what the magnification was) you could clearly see the polar caps and a few other bits of surface detail. It was pretty awesome.

With my x10 Leica binoculars all I got was a slightly larger red dot than the one you can see with the naked eye so, not much really :( Not being on a tripod didn't help much either :D

Michael.
 
OK - just remembered what telescope it was:

It was a Meade 10" LX200GPS Schmidt Cassegrain:

http://www.meade.com/catalog/lx/8_10_lx200gps.html

..he doesn't have the GPS feature (where the telescope works out where it is so it knows where to point when you punch in "Mars" into the computer and hit go) but as long as you've synced it up with a known object (eg the Moon) it works just the same after that. It really is cool - the computer has a 145,000 object database which, once the scope is synced up, you just tell it to go to one and the motor drive wirrs around until it's in the frame...and most importantly, keeps it there with the rotation of the earth. I had no idea amateur telescopes had advanced so far :eek:

No idea what it costs though - must be a fortune.

Michael.
 
$US2,500 - 2,700 in their homeland, Michael. Beautiful instruments, and with a 10" you can see a lot more than with mine (vastly bigger light-gathering power and can take a much higher magnification). The "go to" feature is becoming very common - archrival Celestron also has a range of telescopes that do this (my budget didn't stretch that far, but one day, perhaps...)
 
So that's what it was. I was sitting in my room here on Mars the other day and thought the earth looked bloody close. Tones - was that your telescope I saw twinkling;)
 
Originally posted by batfink
So that's what it was. I was sitting in my room here on Mars the other day and thought the earth looked bloody close. Tones - was that your telescope I saw twinkling;)
Click to expand...

Could be... Interesting confirmation of what I've always suspected, namely that some of this forum's contributors are out of this world!
 
One of my brothers bought a telescope on purpose. We tried to get Mars this night. But he didn't have time to learn how to work the damned thing, and all we could see was a running red dot on the telescope.

With my binoculars (I was a keen bird watcher when I was a young ethologist) x50, and ex. USSR army ones, I could see it rather well, but it kept jumping about - of course, lack of tripod.

But celestial phenomena are really quite sad these days: because of light pollution you can't see anything unless you travel to the summit of a high mountain - where it is bound to be cloudy in any case.

Comets especially are bound to disappoint: Halley was a huge disappointment - I waited for it eagerly since I was about 8!! - as were others after it. But I did see the Hale-Bop very clearly.
 
Hale-Bopp was brilliant chez nous - every morning when I walked out of the front door, there it was, hanging in the sky. A telescope was totally unnecessary! We are fortunate that we live in a village far enough from major towns that light polllution isn't a problem - and as we live only three houses from the edge of the village, we can walk a couple of km up the hill for very dark skies.
 

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