Barney, When seeing conditions are good you should be kicking the power up way past 285; Mars is one of the few objects that can handle a lot of magnification. When conditions are ideal you should be able to observe at well over 500x, and at the higher powers you should be able to see many surface details in an 8-inch scope. At the very least the south polar cap is readily visible in the 300x range (I was having pretty good luck at 317x Saturday morning with my scope in spite of a troublesome breeze). Also, if you have color filters, they can help tease out some of the surface features (green and blue help bring out the polar cap contrast; orange and red help bring out some of the surface features). We were seeing a fair amount of detail Saturday morning at Wolf Creek in Kim Hyatt's 5-inch refractor. All this assuming your C8's optics are properly collimated... -Rich --- "Barney B." <aaah@sisna.com> wrote:
Is anyone getting any surface detail on Mars when using a C-8 scope?
I've tried 130 power 162 power and 285 power with no success...well maybe I can see just the slightest hint of color change at 162 At 285 it's just an orange blob.
This was at 4:30 A.M. last Saturday from Southeast SLC.
Barney B.>
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