[Insomniac]

Finally! I'd always hoped to see Deimos, but never quite expected to see Phobos as well, let alone at the same time. This was around 10.30 p.m local time 26 July here in a north Auckland suburb - despite the nearly full moon nearby. Both were around greatest elongation.

Equipment: 20 inch motorized Obsession, Paracorr field flattener, University Optics 12 and 9mm orthoscopic lenses. Ladder!

The hardest part was placing & keeping Mars only JUST outside the edge of the f.o.v. with the smallest of nudges and lots of overshooting mistakes.
Phobos was no more that a Mars' diameter away and within a faint diffraction spike, and Deimos much further away on the other side.

My wife saw them too. The positions of both matched up with their positions as predicted by Skysafari and Skytools and with respect to the direction of drift in the fov with the scope's motors disengaged.

For comparison, Sirius B is much easier to see in this scope, with no need to put Sirius outside the f.o.v. I suspect that having seen these now will make them much easier to spot in future as long as the seeing is quite steady.