Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Just wanted to share a pic of Mars I took the other night with my scope and digital camera. You can easily make out the southern ice cap and barely some darker surface features. For those of you who have know idea what I am talking about Mars made an historically close approach (34 million miles), something which has not happened in 60,000 years (we were still living in caves), early wed morning (8/27/03). Mars will remain bright throughout Sept, but if you have a scope now is the time to look. Just look high in the southeastern sky after 10 p.m., it will be a bright orange star. Go look because it won’t happen again till 2287, so consider your selves lucky . Anyway just wanted to share, just ignore if it’s no big deal to you.
-Mike

Mike,

My brother spent about $20,000 for his scope, and it finally paid off!! He has been calling me with progress reports and hopefully got some great photos of Mars. His telescope takes up most of his garage. It is huge!

Nathan

I wish, lol. Although I do have my eyes on one of those GPS scopes, maybe when I hit the lottery...lol. E-mail me those pics if possible .
-Mike

All of those years that I was chasing herps, he was "playing" on the computer. Now he owns a computer gaming company, and I am still chasing herps...

Nathan

Thats awsome! Im really into astronomy as well as reptiles, lol. What kind of scope did you use, what kind of camera, and did you use any filters??

A Meade 90ec with 9.7mm lens on a 2x Barlow magnifier (258x total). No filters. The camera is a Sony dsc-75, all I did was hold the camera over the eye piece since I had a hard time finding a mount to fit (every one was sold out cause of the Mars craze). So the fact that I held it and it was a little hazy that nite accounts for the blurriness of the pic. In reality it was much sharper. Oh well just will have to buy a new scope in a few years or go hang out with Nathan’s brother…lol.
-Mike

q;D