Telescope Reviews: Incredible Mars Through the Clouds!

The forecast for here tonight was "partly cloudy" and I had originally brought my Newtonian out to cool around 5 PM in hopes of catching Mercury. But it was so cloudy that you couldn't see the setting sun itself, only a bright region over in the west.

I left my tube outside anyway, and was encouraged when a bit later I looked out for a second and saw Jupiter and Venus. It was dinner time and I had some stuff to do, so by the time I actually got outside it was 11:30 PM. "No sweat", I thought, "I'll just catch Mars!"

When I brought out my mount, tripod, and eyepieces, it was totally overcast, accompanied by that proverbial sinking feeling. And then I spotted Mars, dim, hazy, and haloed through the cloud layer. I quickly set my GEM up and aimed the OTA at Mars.

And here's where the night got very nice. I got Mars roughly in vicinity with a 25 mm Sirius Plössl (40x), in which Mars looked like, literally, a dot, a little orange one. I swapped that out for a 9 mm TMB Planetary (111x); just a bigger dot. Okay, then, go for the jugular- swapped that out for a 4 mm TMB (250x). For the first half hour, the seeing, if you could call it that, made the image too soft in the 4 mm, so I backed down to a 5 mm TMB (200x), and it was okay, but not great. It was sharp in the 7 mm TMB, but it was just a medium-smallish dot there (143x), so I went back to the 5 mm, and was able to get a well-defined limb with the northern polar cap easily visible.

About fifteen or twenty minutes later, the view in the 5 mm was firming up, so I popped the 4 mm back in and still got a nice view. In both of these, I was beginning to be able to see the greenish mare with a tad bit of resolution, so I put in a 2.5 mm TMB (400x)...

... and WOW! It was the closest thing, and maybe the first time I think I can recall getting that impression that I was approaching the planet in a spaceship, looking through the porthole! At 400x with the 2.5 mm, yes, the image was no longer as "tack" sharp as in the lower magnifications, but the north polar cap really popped out and I could actually begin to make out the rough outlines of the mare, particularly the dark outline containing the polar cap, Mare Acidalium, and Mare Erytheraeum blending in with Mare Sireneum; the others were harder to see. There were some unresolved, more nebulous greenish regions by the eastern limb of the planet, but the Sky & Telescope website Mars map did not show any mare or other features there. I was blown away! And there were more moments of no turbulence than I can remember this year so far.

This is the first time I actually got good views out of a cloud layer filtered planet. And that slightly rusty orangish cast of Mars was actually enhanced by the clouds. Incredibly, the views through this layer of stratus completely beat those last night with transparent, but unsteady skies.

The orangy glow, white polar ice cap, and the fairly resolved greenish mare kept me out in the cold for a couple of hours, and I might have absent-mindedly stayed out longer gawking and drooling at a very gorgeous Mars except that the clouds began to thicken. There were several moments toward the end of my session that Mars was totally blocked out. There were more in which it was visible, but really too dark to observe with any satisfaction.

A personal habit of mine is to finally pop in a low power, wider field EP to end the night, but Mars was too small in the 25 mm Plössl, and won't be much bigger in the 16 mm Meade 5000 SWA. Since I most of my night with Mars was spent at 400x, I slid down one notch to the 3.2 mm (313x) and was treated to a very sharp, resolved, detailed view of Mars for about five to ten minutes. Too bad the clouds began to really darken it after that. And at that point I packed it in.

There were a few "lost" moments when the right ascension axis drive motor (Orion SVP TrueTrack) clutch gear slipped and I lost Mars in the field of view. One of those times, the clouds hid Mars for at least ten minutes and I was going to give up, but the cloud layer coughed Mars back out, so I continued. There were a few times when the drive clutch would slip and I had to retighten it. It is tricky because there is an overtightening in which the drive won't work and if undertightened, it would slip within seconds. I'm not sure, but it seems that every time I've had this issue, it was cold out. It could be the temperature. But that didn't spoil my night, as the views of Mars tonight, again, incredibly, through the clouds afforded me sharp, resolved, if not very bright views of Mars at 400x and 313x!