Could not see Mars for the life of me...

[Moses25]

Supposedly the red planet was it's closest to Earth in 22,000 years or sumpin' like that. Am with my folks out in the country right now but could not find Mars in the atmosphere to save my life.

Maybe it's shy?

Anybody have any luck tonight, planetary-wise?

Cheers.😀

 

[Neutron]

I Had Out My Telescope..

And couldn't see it either.

It's all these lights in the Midwest 🙂

Tron

 

[TickleCrazy]

It's hopeless with these city lights and the haze. My friend out in Rockaway might have a shot.

FYI, NYC: the AAA -- Amateur Astronomers Assn. is doing a Mars observation open to the public on Friday, 8/29 at 8:00 pm at the South Street Seaport, Pier 16.

 

[TKpervert]

C'mon folks, city lights even WITH a FULL moon can't hide Mars.
10 PM now on the Pacific Coast and Mars is there at 40 degrees in the eastern sky.

I'm looking at it as I type, with my naked astigmatic eyeballs.

try again tomorrow night.

closest in the last 60,000 years and for the next 2200 years.

 

[BigJim]

Supposedly the red planet was it's closest to Earth in 22,000 years or sumpin' like that.

Try 60,000 mate. 😉 (Well, within a couple of millenia, anyway.)

I couldn't see it either, but then it was pissing with rain all night.

If you could see anything in the sky, then you could've seen Mars unless it was directly obscured. It was brighter than anything except the moon and second in brightness only to Venus when it comes into opposition. (Which can be so damn bright that people report it as a crashing plane, a UFO and it throws shadows too!)

Don't worry if you couldn't see it last night. Mars will be very conspicuous for a few weeks yet. Considering it takes two whole years to come round to each opposition, it'll stay a while. The distance difference between last night and tonight won't make any appreciable difference to it's visibility.

 

[Oddjob0226]

I went out in a field away from city lights where some amature astronomers had set up telescopes to view the God of War. One guy had a 'scope so big he had to haul itin a horse trailer. And I STILL wasn't all that impressed with what I saw. He had a 300x eyepeice that you could see the volcanos with ..... but he didn't bring that eyepiece. I saw the ice cap, and a dark area which were the canals, but I was expecting to see the type of pictures you see in National Geographic with a telescope the size of a howitzer. Instead I saw something the size of a paper hole punch.

Another guy had his telescope aimed at the Ring Nebula. It was the most impressive vauge fuzzy grey blur I'd ever seen.

Damnation!

The Pleadies meteor shower last year during a cloudy night with no telescope was a better show. Someone should do something about this.

 

[Haltickling]

I thought I saw Mars a few days ago, when I returned home from a bar quite late. Impressive! But then suddenly it changed color, and I finally realized that I was staring at a traffic light... 😛

PS: If you want to see some good pics from the real Mars, look here: http://www.msnbc.com/news/957880.asp?cp1=1

 

[Ticklemmmeeeeee]

LOL...once u've seen a planet what's another?....I'd rather eat raisinettes and see u guys type about how u can't see it.....lol...Incidentally, my little girl and I looked high and low...well, we didn't really expect to see it as we looked low but we looked, peered, stared, gawked and searched yet no Mars....so we went inside, and watched the Mars movie marveling at the rotating images...(this is what the deprived folk do for entertainment)...

 

[sole seeker]

It's visible out here in the midwest, when the cloud cover lifts.

I think some of you guys are expecting it to look like a second moon. It doesn't. To me, it looks like a large pink-tinged star (when seen with the naked eye). In the northern hemisphere, try looking east-southeast just before you go to bed.

 

[Prime]

I had a real good view of it here in georgia. Well i mean as good a view as you can have without looking thru a telescope. Every day i would see how it was postioned in accordence with the moon. It started to the left of it and ended on the right of it in a week or so. Sometimes the only thing i could see in the sky was mars and the moon...i guess it was cloud cover taking out the rest of the stars. All in all i guess i can at least say i have seen it.

 

[Ticklemmmeeeeee]

 

[Oddjob0226]

I got an old telescope at the Goodwill store, glued a picture of Jupiter on the lens, then had all the dumb little kids in my apt. complex look through my telescope for 25 cents to see "Mars".

 

[TKpervert]

Geez folks, Mars is that big orange rusty blob up there in the sky.
Forget the backyard telescope, it's still just a big orange rusty blob.
Oddjob must be prosecuted for ripping candy money off dumb little kids.
Reprehensible, dispicable, and all that other hard-to-spell stuff...

 

[BigJim]

I saw the ice cap, and a dark area which were the canals, but I was expecting to see the type of pictures you see in National Geographic with a telescope the size of a howitzer.

Ummm.......canals? The dark area was more ikely to have been vast cloud formations, dark-tinted rock plateaus, or an optical illusion. There are no canals on Mars. At all. Schiparelli thouht there were, but it was proved that they were just the effects of eye-strain.

The closest you'd get to canals would be dried-up river beds, but you'd need a probe in orbit to see them. There isn't a telescope on the face of the Earth that can see a river bed from forty million miles away. Especially given the degree of double atmospheric distortion that would be occuring.

 

[Haltickling]

Ummm.......canals? The dark area was more ikely to have been vast cloud formations, dark-tinted rock plateaus, or an optical illusion. There are no canals on Mars. At all. Schiparelli thouht there were, but it was proved that they were just the effects of eye-strain.

One slight objection, Jim: You're right about the facts; however those darker areas were named "canali", and this terminology still exists. Just like the "mare" on the moon, which certainly are not seas as the name suggests. Historical errors sometimes become immortal in names... 😉

 

[BigJim]

One slight objection, Jim: You're right about the facts; however those darker areas were named "canali", and this terminology still exists. Just like the "mare" on the moon, which certainly are not seas as the name suggests. Historical errors sometimes become immortal in names... 😉

Bugger. 🙁

 

[phatteus]

I saw what I might have been the canali, and observed, through my telescope, an odd dark spot at the "top" of the planet, which would have been the bottom of the planet to the naked eye, refraction telescope, you know (I'm not certain of the axis, so I can't say whether it was one of the poles or not.) Upon further inspection, however, I discovered that a spider had died inside my telescope, and the corpse had become wedged up against the lens.

For a brief moment, I felt even stupider than I normally feel.

 

[Oddjob0226]

One slight objection, Jim: You're right about the facts; however those darker areas were named "canali", and this terminology still exists. Just like the "mare" on the moon, which certainly are not seas as the name suggests. Historical errors sometimes become immortal in names... 😉

Yeah Jim.

!

I'm not saying that wanking barmy poxy Martians dug canals so they could sail their Martian barges down the roadways of Martian Venice in between Martin Wimpys and Tescos. The old dried up canyon/river beds. 2 of the astronomers there told me the dark area I saw were what used to be theorized as being 'canals'. I still think it's a cool word to use, and, beiing so cool that I am, I use it.

The Olympus Mons on Mars isn't really THE Mount Olympus.

 

[BigJim]

(I'm not certain of the axis, so I can't say whether it was one of the poles or not.)

Mars has a more or less identical axial tilt to Earth. (Between 23.5 and 24.5 degrees from the vertical.) This means it has identically spaced seasons, although they are twice as long as ours; because of the greater orbital distance.

 

[BigJim]

I'm not saying that wanking barmy poxy Martians dug canals so they could sail their Martian barges down the roadways of Martian Venice in between Martin Wimpys and Tescos.

You mean they don't? 😕 What DO they do for fun then?

The old dried up canyon/river beds. 2 of the astronomers there told me the dark area I saw were what used to be theorized as being 'canals'.

Yes the dark areas would have been the same thing Schiparelli referred to as "canali". (Italian for canals.) They would still have been an optical illusion or a sighting of an atmospheric disturbance though.
You can't see the martian canyons from Earth with anything smaller than an Arecibo or VLA sized telescope. Even then it's vague as buggery because of the atmospheric distortion. You can only see them really, with cameras mounted on inter-planetary probes.

Knobber. 😛

I still think it's a cool word to use, and, beiing so cool that I am, I use it.

Cool wanker. 😀

The Olympus Mons on Mars isn't really THE Mount Olympus.

It isn't? The gods go to the trouble of making a mountain (or to be strictly accurate, an extinct volcano) three times the size of Everest and it ISN'T the real deal? Bastards! 😡


BTW, guess what my favourite hobby has been since I was 6? 😀😀😀 (Possibly the only thing I love more than tickling. Heh heh.)

 

[Oddjob0226]

From what I read, the Martians LOVE kidnapping Earthlings and performing rectal exams on them. But that's another web site......


It isn't? The gods go to the trouble of making a mountain (or to be strictly accurate, an extinct volcano) three times the size of Everest and it ISN'T the real deal?

I'm starting to become an atheist - I keep looking for the giant turtle that Asians say carries the Earth upon its back and have never been able to find it no matter where I point the telescope. Can anyone give me the right coordinates for this?