Autonemesis

In fact, Mars will be so close that its apparent size in the eyepiece will be very nearly as large as Jupiter (about 25 arc sec.). I cannot wait. This will be the best Mars apparition for several decades to come. I will be digitizing images like a mad man (that 120Gb capture disk will come in handy after all).

Unfortunately for N. America and Europe, when Mars is at the point in its orbit closest to Earth, it is also far to the south, in Sagittarius and Scorpius. It's difficult to get steady seeing for an object so close to the horizon. I may take a trip to South Texas or the Florida Keys to get further south, where Mars will be seen at a higher elevation. Maybe I'll trek to Cabo San Lucas at the tip of Baja in Mexico.

Shadowy Man

Cool. I was at the National Solar Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico using the Vacuum Tower Telescope to do observations. We had an optical setup including an infrared camera and a visible camera. The setup was taking high speed images, so we could make movies! The visible camera took images through several different filters including on- and off-band methane features. The impacts disrupted the cloud layers, so when you looked at the methane features you could see the impact debris stand out in higher contrast.

Unfortunately, in the infrared, there was very little contrast. (At visible wavelengths they were dark, at deep infrared they were bright - in the middle they didn't show up).

Born Free

Wow I can't wait to get a pair of binoculars and have a gander, it fascinates me immensely. I wonder if my old fashioned type of video recorder would work in the meantime???

Editing this link to give a better one the earth and moon viewer, it's a pretty cool site.



eart and moon viewer

Puck

Yes, I reccomend them for a good start! I've only had one night so far that was clear for about an hour, but wow. So much more than the nekkid eye can see, and I've got a wider field of vision than with my silly little telescope., so picking out what you are looking for is easier. A great way to get familiar with the sky.

Now, if this blasted rain would go away for awhile.

Cipher Girl

Jupiter is one of my favorite planets to observe. It's so cool to see the 4 largest moons going around it. Something different every night when you are looking at it. I have a 8" Schmidt Cassegrain telescope with a heavy duty equatorial mount. One of these days I would love to start taking some pictures.

I also like to observe the Orion Nebula, Saturn, the globular clusters near Sagittarius, etc.

Have fun.