Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcane
Now, from what you guys have said, Mars is 1/113 of the size of the moon with the naked eye right? So if I used a magnification of 113 I would see in my scope, mars as the size of the moon I see with the naked eye?
That would mean mars would be pretty big in my scope, which it is not even with the 10mm and 2.8 barlow.
I could tell it was a disc and a planet, I could even see a slightly off color band on it. But basically what I saw was a yellow fuzzy ball that was about 1/10th the size of the moon I can see with the naked eye.
Mars did not take up all of my FOV or even remotely close to it even with the 10mm and 2.8 barlow. So this leads me to think I must be doing something else wrong.
When I look at the moon I am simply amazed at the detail I can see, It is almost like I am standing on the surface. I can see shadows of mountains and every crater in great detail. But when I look at Mars I see a tiny yellow dot with practically no detail at all.
The detail part I am not worried about, it may be because of collimation or a nearly full moon or atmospheric conditions or who knows, but I would at least like to see a Big disk in my FOV, even if it is blurry.
You say the magnification I am using is 300+X so I should see mars taking up my full FOV right? Or at least close to it, not a small yellow dot.
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If you check my first reply, you'll find that I said the following:
"Even at a magnification of 341x Mars won't be all that big but you should see a clearly discernible disk."
Mars is quite small, even during opposition. It currently subtends a diameter of almost 16 arcseconds, about 113x the size of the Moon (~1800 arcseconds). At a magnification of 113x, the Martian disk will be similar in apparent size to the naked-eye view of the Moon. Why then does it seem to look smaller? It's because one doesn't compare the Moon to the entire dome of the sky when one looks at it but, subconsciously or not, one does compare an object in the field of view of an eyepiece to the entire field.
Observing Mars takes a properly collimated and athermalized instrument of sufficient aperture (at least 6 inches), good "seeing", the appropriate filters, practice, and, most of all, patience.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/obser.../12083136.html
You won't see Mars taking up the entire field of view unless you're employing an extreme and unusable magnification of over 11,200x (assuming a 50 degree AFOV Ploessl) and you won't see much in the way of surface features if the "bland" desert side of Mars is facing the Earth at the time that you're observing the planet.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/obser...t/3307831.html
Dave Mitsky