From: "jimchung2338" <jim_chung@sunshine.net>

Date: January 31, 2010 1:49:30 PM MST

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Mars at Opposition

Saturday night was a little warmer than the -19ºC of Friday night and the seeing was supposed to be better according to CSC. I figured it would never get better than this so I took the plunge.

This was going to be a C8 vs 12" dob Mars Opposition imaging shootout.

I have this old C8 from the 1990s with the earlier Starbright coatings and not the Starbright XLT. And it's really unusual, it came with a white paint job from the factory, apparently Vixen sold it when Celestron & Vixen shared product line back then. The Ronchi tests have always been very good and I've gotten very sharp planetary images from it. I wanted to see how good my stock 12" SkyWatcher dob mirror would fare against the C8 standard.

As you can see, the C8 reveals far more albedo detail despite its smaller aperture. Now this is going to bug me and I'll have to have the SW mirror stripped and refigured!

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Astro_IIDC/files/Planetary/MarsOpposition2010.jpg 

Jim