Gilly,

Seeing fine detail on Mars is never easy, but this will be your best chance!

A few basics. Set your scope out early so it can thermally stabilize. Don’t set up where you are viewing directly over someones radiating roof. Tighten up your mount as best you can. A wobbly mount or cranky focuser will try anyones patience. This is the great thing about refractors, just plop it out an hour or two before the optimum time. Optimum viewing will be a little before and little after the planet reaches zenith. Unfortunately this is still pretty late, but getting earlier in the evening as we get to the end of August. Pick a night in and around new moon or when the moon sets early. Hope for a clear and steady night. Windy is no good. A light fog is a good indication of very still air. For the planets, it is best to have a range of eyepieces. Don’t laugh, but I have pairs of 7,8,9,10,11,12.5, 15 and 19mm eyepieces for my binoviewer. The other night was pretty steady so I was able to use 7-8mm (170-200x). But usually I’m around 11-15mm (90-120x). Start at a lower power and increase as the seeing/image allows. Aperture will certainly help but a range of eyepieces enabling you to use the highest power for whatever viewing conditions is very important also, i.e. if my skies are allowing the use of 9mm for 150x, and all I have are 19mm (70x) and 6mm (225x). The 19mm will give a sharp but small image and the 6mm would a blurry mess.

You can live vicariously thru these amazing amateur photos.

Check out the Mars photos!!!!

http://www.buytelescopes.com/gallery/gallery.asp?sg=1

Yup, Saturn and Jupiter are not up now.

Clear skies,

glenmore