Or does it?
Apparently so, according to our picture, which is of the middle of the night between Sunday and Monday. Mars is one degree above the eastern horizon, at ten minutes past midnight.
However, this is by clocks now on the summer regime of Daylight “Saving” Time. They are one hour fast, pretending that 11 o’clock is “12.”.
Here is part of my “rising and setting” graph for 2018.
The vertical line near the right represents midnight; the slanting red curve “Mars rises” crossed it as long ago as May 12. By this more natural time, Mars has been rising before midnight for more than ten days.
It has joined a late-evening-early-morning scene with Saturn and Jupiter, spread out over the zodiacal constellations of Capricornus, Sagittarius, Scorpius, and Libra, therefore enriched by Antares and the other starry features of the summer Milky Way.
Jupiter was at opposition on May 9; Saturn will be on June 27, Mars on July 27. The “anti-Sun” point, sliding steadily eastward, meets each of these planets as it hovers on or near the ecliptic. The Moon, too, rushed past the anti-Sun point, that is, was Full, on May 29. Beginning to dwindle, it passes 3 degrees north of Mars on Sunday (in morning daylight for North America), and by the time of our picture has moved on, so that it will rise about 20 minutes after Mars.
I don’t have a very good view of the night sky where I live in east Tennessee. With the dust storm on Mars covering the planet, are people seeing Mars’ color change with the unaided eye?
Did anyone in the ancient world (before the telescope, I mean) note unpredictable changes in the color of Mars? Or would such an observation have been “swept under the rug” because it was contrary to the “medieval model”, which I think couldn’t take variability of a planet into account?
Anthony, I’m glad you are getting some good views of Mars already. I’m amazed that you’re able to detect that much detail with a 60mm f/5.5 refractor! Since this summer is going to be one of the last great Martian oppositions in my lifetime, I recently bought a home-made 12.5 inch f/8 reflector from a guy in Austin, TX. I’ve had some excellent views of Jupiter in the evenings, but our weather has been so horrible in central Virginia that I haven’t trained it on Mars yet.
Hi Eric. You don’t need a lot of aperture to be able to see a bright planet. Depending on the steadiness of the atmosphere, I can get up to about 100x magnification with the 60 mm telescope, plenty of magnification to be able to see differences in the darkness and color of different areas on the Martian surface, as well as large areas of cloud or frost. The skysafari mobile apps shows which side of Mars is currently facing toward Earth, and I have a lovely Mars globe from Sky and Telescope, so I can figure out what I’m seeing.
A bigger telescope would allow higher magnification, but I live in a second-floor apartment and I can easily carry the 60 mm on a light altazimuth mount up and down the stairs for a quick look at the sky in the evening or in the morning before getting ready to go to work. As they say, the best telescope is the one you use the most.
When the atmosphere is unsteady, a smaller telescope can actually provide a better view than a bigger telescope. The smaller telescope looks through a narrower atmospheric column, so you might get less turbulence between different atmospheric cells moving in different directions. When there’s a lot of turbulence, it doesn’t matter which telescope you’re using, you’ll just see a jittering blob of light.
Anyway, I hope you get awesome views with the big reflector!
“Mid-night” is halfway from sunset to sunrise. Here at 122 degrees 25 arcminutes west longitude, midnight tonight will be at 1:08 am Pacific Daylight Time, rounded to the minute. By the clock, standard time delays midnight by 9 minutes 37 seconds at this longitude; daylight saving time pushes midnight an hour earlier; the equation of time currently speeds up midnight by about two minutes. (I often annoy coworkers and friends by correcting them when they refer to 12:00 PDT as noon.)
I’ve been enjoying seeing Mars brighten week by week, and get bigger through my 60 mm f/5.5 refractor. For the past couple of weeks, during moments of steady seeing, albedo features and clouds in the Hellas Basin have been easily visible at 73x to 97x magnification. And the show will get better for the next couple of months!