I battled insomnia for much of last night, so when I looked at the clock and it was almost 4:00 am (EDT), I decided to check the sky and found that it was (surprisingly enough) crystal clear. I grabbed my scopes and headed outside for a completely unplanned observing session.
The first thing I noticed was the transparency: For the first time in 3 months, the sky was free of all haze, and the Milky Way was clearly visible all the way across the sky. (The third-quarter moon was just rising, and still behind the trees to the east.) Wow! Lots and lots of stars--more than I have seen since February! I took a few minutes to just take in the naked-eye view before setting up the Oracle and my new TV-102 to have a look at Mars, my first look since June 6.
Just as I was aiming the 102 at Mars, a brilliant fireball meteor streaked across the sky, above and to the right of the planet. It winked out several degrees to the right of the planet, at about the same altitude (about 37 degrees). At its peak, it outshone Mars by quite a bit! I estimated its magnitude at -1.5 to -2.0, and measured the length of its visible trail (using the calibrated-hand-at-arms- length method :-) to be about 20 degrees. I added a rough sketch of the trail to my Mars observation form, but when I went to note the time I realized I had left my watch inside. (I told you this was unplanned.) I believe the time was between 4:10 and 4:15 EDT, or 8:10-8:15 UT.
Next I turned my attention to Mars. At first glance in the Oracle, it was apparent that the seeing was generally poor. There were occasional steady moments, but overall the view was disappointing. If I'd had any sense, I would have bagged the planetary viewing and gone DSO hunting with the new TV-102. But doggone it, I came out to see Mars, and to see it with my classy new scope! I decided to brave the seeing and make a sketch, anyway.
The sketch was an exercise in patience, as I waited for rare moments of decent seeing and fought the vibrations induced by tweaking the focus of my under-mounted scope. I started by noting my first impressions, and then began to sketch what I could see. The sketch was made primarily from 8:30 to 8:50 UT, which corresponds to a CM of about 349.5 degrees.
The best view in the Oracle was with a 4mm Radian at 140x; in the 102 I preferred my 7mm Nagler at 126x. The peach color of the planet was not as intense as my view on June 6. The south polar cap was still a brilliant white, but perhaps not quite as large as the last time I saw it. There was a great deal of brightening along the eastern limb, indicative of clouds and haze in the Martian atmosphere. I also spotted a small white region near the northern tip of the planet; I don't know if this was a detached region of clouds, or if I was seeing an edge of a northern ice cap.
A #21 (Orange) filter revealed a large, L-shaped dark region that covered approximately 50% of the planet's surface. However, the seeing was bad enough that it often seemed to wander around on the planet, making the exact boundaries hard to define, and masking any subtle details within the "L." Ultimately, I just sketched the region in its "average" location. This region had one edge that seemed darker than the rest (included in my sketch). Once I got back inside I was able to compare the sketch against a Mars map, and found that I was probably seeing Sinus Sabaeus.
With or without the filter, a dark band was clearly visible along the edge of the south polar ice cap. I don't know if the line is real, of if it was just a trick of my eyes caused by the sharp contrast between the bright polar cap and the darker regions of the planet. I still need to compare against some recent photos on the web.
[Follow-up note: The dark band is real, as documented in numerous CCD images & sketches on the web.]
Neil