Quote:
Originally Posted by Insomniac
but then it's tempered by people saying that both should be well within the capabilities of much smaller apertures.
So if anyone's seen them in scopes much smaller than 20 inches, more credit to you!
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Nice effort. They are a challenging target in any telescope under 20".
As Ken suggested an occulting bar helps enormously. With Phobos being close to Mars it is by far the toughest. With the current opposition Mars has an apparent angular size of ~24' which is similar to the August 2003 opposition and easily people's best chance to catch them since 2003. That all having been said they are still tough to get in 16" to 20" class telescopes. With an occulting bar you might get them in 12" and larger scopes under very favourable conditions. Deimos might be visible in scopes down to about 10" or so, but they aren't an easy thing and favourable conditions help enormously.
Cheers
John B