I equipped the 120mm Evostar with an Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector, a notorious seeing suppressor, and got to work. Also, a barlow and my Leica zoom eyepiece. The combination of the two ( and another intermediate) put magnifications of 50 to 250X at my disposal. That had to be enough. Just in for the news and let the gear cool down.
The
The
After a while I saw Mars peeking out over the houses and treetops in the East. In company with the Moon. Whew..... this was not going to be anything so low on the horizon. Then let's look for some open star clusters. Losing time... The Pleiades invited themselves. In the group, with the Moon as a clear hindrance, I counted about sixty stars. Remarkable that the Moon has so much influence. A week earlier I counted over 80, with a smaller refractor but the same magnification and eyepiece. It appeared that I could get to magnitude 12 with some difficulty. Without the Moon I get deeper. NGC884, NGC869, the double open cluster in Perseus were the next candidates, sidelined by Stock 2. One more pass by the ET cluster NGC457 and stop at Mirach for
Mars had detached itself from the row of trees and houses beyond, Mars time! The blue/white clouds, which have been written about for the last week, on the northern edge stood out right away. This was so bright, this couldn't just be Hellas . Several sources had assured me that it was NOT a polar cap either. Very noticeable is the bright edge on the left of the sketch. It seemed to encompass just about half the planet!
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