The sky miraculously cleared up Friday night, so I set-up the 6" and watched Mars until 2 am. I am posting this before bed, while still clear in my mind. I've been up since 5 am! I first had to replace the batteries for my mirror fan- eight AAA, four of which had leaked since I last checked them in July. Of course I didn't discover this until I was already outside in the dark. Anyway, there was no damage (plastic battery compartment), to the scope anyway; my middle-aged knees took a bit of abuse, the insulated coveralls helped. Once the fan was running, the image snapped into crisp focus- the seeing was exellent right after the front passed. The air was clear and clean, and only a bit of high-altitude turbulence but there were frequent satisfying moments of absolute stillness. I didn't check a Website to make sure, but it appeared that Meridiani Sinus was just about dead-center and very obvious, with Syrtis Major on the limb- that feature should be well-placed before dawn. During moments of extremely good seeing, I could just detect a brightening over Chryse- the location of the current dust storm outbreak. Not obvious, fleeting, but just convincing enough to make me believe it. This is an exellent opposition so-far. Lots of visual detail in a small telescope, but I wouldn't advise much less than about 4" aperture. I did most of my observing at 293X, near the theoretical limit for a 6", and I found myself wishing that I had the energy to set-up the 10", the seeing would have accommodated the larger aperture tonight easily- and then some. Best views were with the 12.5mm Konig-2 and good old UO 9mm ortho, both used with the Klee 2.8X Barlow working at closer to 3X or slightly more. Best filtration was with a #80A and #82A stacked, also a #56 gave good contrast, surprisingly the #11 also increased contrast noticeably. But the two blue filters together gave the most natural view while still yielding the most detail and cutting the glare. You may be able to use darker filters if you have a much larger aperture to offset the dimming. It's amazing how fast 2-1/2 hours can go by, with one's eye to an eyepiece and butt on a stool. I'm sure I'll be dreaming about Mars tonight, and scheming to get to SPOC on Monday night if the weather cooperates. __________________________________ Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click. http://farechase.yahoo.com