Quote:
Originally Posted by astro744
Just look at the angular sizes of each planet and that will give you a difference in size in any telescope.
Currently Jupiter is just over 44 arcsec and Mars is less than 7.
Therefore Mars will appear about 6 times smaller than Jupiter in any telescope at the moment using the same magnification on each object.
Mars is tiny and serious visual observation is difficult under 10 arcsec.
Because of the highly elliptical orbit of Mars, its size varies with each opposition over about a 17-18 year cycle. The largest Mars is 25 arcsec and the smallest about 13 arcsec. The 2010 opposition will be 14.1 and the 2012 opposition will be 13.89 and go back up to 24.31 in 2018.
Also good news for us in the Southern hemisphere is that our closest oppositions are always south of the celestial equator (high in the sky) and the farthest are north of the equator (lowest in the sky).
Therefore to answer your question (without knowing what telescope you have); Yes, Mars is very small at the moment and a 25mm or even 9mm eyepiece in most telescope will show a very tiny disk.
The 2010 opposition of Mars is January 29 and the disk will slowly get bigger between now and opposition date.
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That' great news it means I have stuff to look forward to
made my day I thought that that was as good as it got. I must admit I was disappointed because it was so small that any detail was not possible to see. So does this mean we are on an increase in apparent size for a while?
