Great seeing in the UK for Mars

High pressure is dominating over the UK for a few days bringing glorious weather and last night at least, great seeing conditions. I had perhaps the best eyepiece view of the Red Planet I can remember, and it was rock steady on the laptop screen. If only it was bigger than 13.2 arc-seconds!

The Northern Polar region is at the bottom and the dark area center bottom is Mare Acidelium with Sinus Meridian the dark region disappearing on the left. The large dark region in the upper part of the image is Mare Erythraeum. I think that the black dot on the right limb is the top of the volcano Olympus Mons poking through the clouds. (correction it is Ascraeus Mons poking up – thanks to Martin Mobberley for this).  Click on the image to see it at full size.

I’m adding his image for comparison – taken 24 hours later. The seeing was not as good, so a ‘softer’ result was obtained.