Here comes Mars, and its getting closer and brighter every day,
Opposition will occur at 2320 UT on October 13, 2020 with an apparent planetary disk diameter of 22.4 arc-sec at closest approach for the year.
Here is my shot of the planet Mars Last Saturday Night 08-30-2020..I just love it when Mars gets close to the Earth every two years!
When Mars gets closer, it gets larger in size in a telescope allowing you to see the many wonderful surface features. Luckily no Martian dust storm yet, ..sometimes Mars gets a global dust storm and thus preventing us from making out any surface details, but fortunately so far this year’s approach it is looking good.
If you look up in the night sky for Mars with the unaided eye you will notice that Mars is super bright and orange, look in the East South-East around 2:00am you can’t miss it, it’s the super Bright orange, is Midnight to 2:00am too late or early for you?, Then look straight up over head at 5:00am to 6:00am, and you will see Mars, but now since you’re up and looking at Mars, you may as well take look at another planet, the brightest thing in the sky, The planet Venus if you look due East something even brighter will be the Planet Venus at 5: 00am to 6:00am the two bright stars next to Venus are the Gemini twins Castor and Pollux.
The Planet Mars on 08-30-2020 @ 06:54 U.T., The Martian Surface features: Arabia Terra top half orange region, The long dark feature running from center to the east(left) is the Arabia Peninsula (Terra Meridiani), the large dark feature on the western Limb(right) is the largest Martian feature known as Syrtis Major. Just below Syrtis Major is a lighter color region known as Hellas Planitia, go a little more south of Hellas and you see the Bright white Martian Southern Polar Ice Cap. This was captured under good transparency, but just average seeing conditions in my backyard in Dayton, Ohio.
Captured with my C-11 telescope, Paramount ME robotic Mount, & ZWO 224MC color Cmos camera, 2x barlow & ADC, running at 120FPS, 2500 frames SER video Fire-capture, Autostakkert, & Registax6 , Adobe CC.
Best Regards,
John Chumack
