The 2018 powder storm lasted from June to September. I took this shot on June 27, about a week after the storm surrounded the planet, with my 8 -inch Celeston SCT. You can simply distinguish Valles Marineris, a 2,500 miles long canyon near the center. Credit: Molly Wakeling
To public observers and in the evenings with the friends of the telescope, we love to put our eyes on the wonders of Saturn and Jupiter on every occasion. All year round, every time they are above the horizon, they never stop surprising. Mars, on the other hand, is easy to underestimate because it seems small for most of the year, making it difficult to choose the type of detail you can see on the gas giants.
But every 26 months, the orbits of land and Mars allow us a more careful look at the red planet when Mars is in opposition – which will happen on the night of January 15 of this year. In the early evening, Mars will be easy to identify: it will be the brilliant, rubbine and stellar object just under Castor and Pollux, the twins twins of Gemini, almost east. It rises quickly and will be almost above the head for midnight for the southern United States and still high for the rest of the country.
While you can see Mars like a small record through binoculars, a telescope is needed to obtain any detail. When it comes to planets, long-lasting tools are your friend: my favorite for viewing the planets is my celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain, with a block of 2,032 mm in focal length. How many magnifications you can launch on Mars will depend heavily on the local vision conditions, that is, the stability of the atmosphere. If you see is good, choose your eyepieces in taller magnification or use a lens leaps with a lower power.
For the nights of seeing the average, a good empirical rule is to use a magnification between 30 times and 50 times the opening of your inch telescope. For example, with my 8-inch area, 240-400x should work well, which means that I will use the ocular 5 mm to 8.5 mm. A humble Plössl – not the most complex of eye drawings – can offer satisfactory views. Also try some color filters, if you have them, to bring out different features. Don’t expect to see the color.
When observing Mars, there are three main features that are immediately evident: light -red dusty regions, darker areas of the exposed volcanic rock and white polar ice caps. The first astronomers called the lightest regions such as the land masses, such as Elysium Planitia (the Elysium plain), and called the darker regions as water bodies, such as the Tyrrhenian mare (appointed for the Mar Tyrrhenian in the Mediterranean). The polar ice cape wax and fall with the Marzian seasons and our ability to see them is also influenced by Mars’s inclination, but I find them the most exciting to be identified. With a little diligence and a map of Mars, you can ascertain what features you are looking at. I use the Skysafari smartphone app to see what is currently visible zooming on Mars and using its features. The red planet revolves once every 24 hours and 40 minutes, then observing it all night will reveal different features, as well as looking at it over a few weeks.
Mars also has more transient phenomena. Despite having a much thinner atmosphere than the earth, the clouds are formed on Mars, in particular on large basins. Martian volcanoes also tend to attract them. Use a blue or purple filter to see the clouds more easily.
Mars is also known for its powder storms, which can sometimes surround the entire planet – as happened in 2018. When this happens, Mars appears to be clear and without characters for weeks or even months. The 2018 storm killed the opportunity of Rover 5,352 Sols (Martian Days) in his mission. These storms change the appearance of the Martian landscape, which is why the maps of the fourth planet of decades ago seem different from the current ones.
There are many exciting features to enjoy when they look at Mars; You can really have the feeling of how similar the dusty planet is to ours. If you cannot observe it directly in the opposition, don’t worry: it will remain large and bright for several weeks as its distance from the earth increases. Personally I like to listen to “Mars, The Binger of War” by Gustav Holst while I watch it through my telescope. Happy Mars Opposition!
