November 2018

Phases of the Moon

Venus

Venus rises in the morning and becomes the "morning star", very bright (around -4 mag). You can observe it by naked eye after November 15 when it will be quite high on the sout-eastern sky around 5 a.m. local time.

Mars Observation: Great perihelic opposition 2018

The diameter of Mars' disk is now only about 10 arc-seconds. To see some details on its surface (the south polar cap, dark albedo features), you will need a large telescope (the diameter of 20cm at least) and large magnification (around 200x -300x). Additionally, you will need also a very good seeing (i.e., a small air turbulence), because high magnifications can not be used in bad seeing (wind, large gradient of temperature, etc). There is a summer on the southern hemisphere and a winter on the northern hemisphere on Mars now. The south polar cap diminishes rapidly and becomes very difficult to observe. This is also a period of possible dust storms that can arise on the southern hemisphere (e.g., in Hellas) and spread over the whole globe.