Here in Virginia, we didn’t get to see the moon occult Mars this morning, but it was a very near miss. The clouds were thick, but there were enough gaps that (with patience) I could still enjoy the view.
I was set up by 5:00 a.m. EDT (9:00 UT) with my TV-102. I don’t have a dew heater yet (I’ve just started building my own--I’ll let you know if it works), so I improvised: My wife had suggested using the microwavable heating pad that she uses sometimes for her back. Strapped to the tube with a velcro band, it looked ridiculous, but did the job admirably! (Manual heat regulation consisted of me fumbling with the velcro to remove/reposition the pad as needed.) I was afraid it would unbalance the scope, but actually the sloshing fluid in the pad seemed to help damp my usual focusing vibrations. (Is there a new product idea here? :-) It is possible, of course, that uneven heating degraded my seeing, but at least I COULD see--a great improvement over my last two attempts to view Mars.
At 9:00 UT, Mars was already past its closest approach to the moon, but not too much. The best view was at 147x in my 6mm Radian: Wow! A TINY, TINY Mars (complete with polar cap, dark polar band, and a little bit of maria showing) was parked just beside the moon. Since I couldn’t see the edge of the dark portion of the moon, I had to estimate the distance of Mars from the lunar terminator. At 9:01 UT, I marked on my observing log that it looked to be about 10 Mars diameters from the terminator, where it ran through the center of the crater Endymion (which was magnificent at this hour! Sunlight light the rim of the crater well past the terminator, as well as a ridgeline & craterlet inside Endymion). I did not have a moon map with me, and have never studied the moon in detail (yet :-), so I just sketched the major craters and identified them once I got inside (using Cherrington’s excellent moon book).
I noted in my observing log that Mars looked like it would just fit in the little crater Franklin, along the terminator. It is amazing to me that on other nights I have sat for hours and patiently sketched surface details on an object that is so far away that it appears tinier than some of the smaller features of the moon! Mars was dwarfed by the craters Plato and Atlas, and yet it is a complete world of its own, reachable (albeit at >200x) with my backyard telescopes. Wow.
I attempted a close-up sketch of Mars using my 4mm Radian, but the clouds were thickening, and all I got were brief glimpses. I had no idea what the CM was until I got back inside; I just sketched what little I could see in the few seconds between clouds. Total time on the sketch was under 3 minutes, because the sky refused to cooperate and the mosquitoes were beginning to acquire a taste for DEET. I did manage to identify Mare Sirenum from my sketch when I got inside.
The last details I sketched were an indication on my original drawing of how far Mars had moved while I was outside, and a hasty sketch of the naked-eye view as I was packing up, which was striking--a brilliant red Mars directly beside the bright white moon! I wish I could have taken photos with my digital camera, but the clouds made that too messy to attempt.
My sketches and observing notes are available here.
(My apologies to ALPO for ignoring all conventions in sketching on this form. I used the three circles to draw the eyepiece view of the moon & Mars, the orb of Mars itself, and then a naked-eye view. There are also a couple of “inset” detail sketches that go with the first 147x view.)
Clear skies,
Neil