Well, the night of Mars' closest approach wasn't super-great, but for me it
was worth going.
I mostly looked at Mars, with a few peeks at other eye candy. I ought to
have worked on H400-2s, but I ended up just looking at Mars and dessert
stuff and hanging out. Which is fine by me.
I was very gratified that Senor Turley had figured out the references from
my OI. That pleased me greatly.
Sky was clear, temperatures were mid-40s, dew was variable. When I left at
2, it had gotten very dewy. I had dew heaters on most of the time.
Seeing was variable, too. When Mars got to culminating around 1-2 am, the
seeing was good enough for me to feel fairly gratified about having gone
out to observe. Until it got above about 45 or 50 degrees altitude, though,
it wasn't terribly special, except for rare moments. Even at its best,
though, the moments of best seeing came and went.
Unlike the 'closest approach night' of 2003, Mars showed us its interesting
side this time. The evening started out with Syrtis Major nicely placed
near the central meridian. As it rotated out of view, I had some decent
views of the 'bifurcated' dark stripe that follows it. (I think that the
northern dark arm of this is Sinus Sabeus, and the southern dark arm is
Mare Serpentis or Noachis Terra. The light area in between is Deucalionis
Regio, I think.) By the time I stopped observing, the Sinus Sabeus / Sinus
Merdiani dark stripe was centered up, although Meridiani wasn't as
distinguishable as usual, and I think this may have been due to the dust
storm. At times I though I made out a yellower- and brighter-than-usual
spot near the end of Sabeus, and I suspect that was the storm.
Even in the moments of best seeing, though, what was remarkable was what I
didn't see. I can't honestly say that I had even one confirmed sighting of
the south polar cap. And none of last weekend's north polar clouds were
around, as far as I could tell. The Hellas basin was faintly distinguished,
at best. The dust storm, if I saw it, was intermittently seen. I'd have to
say that Mars's surface features weren't exactly crisp and snappy last
night, at least not with the seeing I had. From what I've read about Mars
observing, though, that's not exactly uncommon. Hey, at least it wasn't a
global dust storm, I'm telling myself.
All in all, worth getting out, even if it wasn't the greatest seeing. And
no crowds! I think that everyone was at Halloween parties. It was a nice
low-key night.
Oh, and Jurgen was down at the far end of the lot with his AP155 / AP1200
imaging rig, blowing us all out of the water. He was recording data from a
planet - around another star!
Marek Cichanski
Received on Sun Oct 30 11:23:54 2005