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Best view of Mars until 2016

m_huber said:
So go find a spot to contemplate the heavens and remember just how small you are. It will do you good. It did me.
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Working nights and being a smoker, it takes more than a good view of a planet to fill me with awe and wonder. Let me know when we've got a nice - 5 magnitude comet in the skies. ;)

I've been noticing Mars for a couple of weeks know when a co-worker pointed it out and I confused it with Jupiter (it's a lot higher on the ecliptic than the last time I remember a perigee). Since then, as long as the skies have been clear I've been watching it slowly work it's way west over the night and followed that up with the appearance of Venus in the east.
 
I hope I can get out sometime soon with a telescope. Planetary astronomy is a particular fascination of mine.
 
I noticed it a couple of weeks ago. I knew right away it was Mars. It was red. I've never really noticed the color before, at least so plainly. With the slight magnification of a telephoto lens, I could see it was clearly a disc, rather than a point.

I guess if I didn't live in a city my whole life, I might have seen this before, but I was pretty impressed.
 
Soapy Sam said:
And Saturn in between.
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Michael Redman said:
I guess if I didn't live in a city my whole life, I might have seen this before, but I was pretty impressed.
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That's why Saturn blends in with the stars for me. I have not lived in cities my whole life, but for the last 14 years my view has been washed out, depending on whether I was home in Dallas (where I could see, at best magnitude - 3 objects) or at work in Plano (where + 1 is visible but there is still a lot of wash out). Mars is still very obvious because of the color and Venus because of the brightness.

Recently, when I was taking and picking up my cat from my mom's I enjoyed a view I had not seen in many years. To the north of her house is very little in terms of major roadways or development so the washout is minimal and I saw hundreds more stars than I do when at home or at work.

Of the two or three disappointments I had during TAA2 was the fact that we were overcast for so much of the time. :( It would have been very interesting to see the heavens from such a different lattitude than I have been used to.
 
I'm expecting the first of the cylinders to crash-land on Horsell common
any day now. :)
 
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