Mars has been pretty good this year, well, compared to 2018 anyway. I'd been viewing Mars occasionally even in May. I'd got a bad case of 'Mars fever' early on.



As you can see lol. I finally managed to set my EQ5 up and caught Mars at perigee and on the opposition with my 150mm Newtonian. I'd kind of forgotten about my binoviewing plans for Mars. I don't use the bino's much.



The plan was to use my 127mm Mak (although now on a Porta II/TL130) and William Optics bino's. I usually use an Amici diagonal with the binoviewer because my Mak's are mostly used for lunar viewing. I needed a conventional diagonal which was light and strong enough to take the weight of the bino unit plus eyepieces. Plus, most importantly, it had to be small enough to fit into my bino case.



I eventually settled on a 1.25" Tele Vue Enhanced Aluminum (or aluminium as we say). As these are cast in one piece there is virtually no chance of the combined weight of the BV and eyepieces breaking the diagonal. I've known brazed drawtubes to become detached when using a zoom eyepiece. It's also a possibility that threaded nosepieces can become detached with sufficient weight.



So, I was all set on Thursday the 15th to finally try the ensemble out.



I had a few filters, as Mars usually needs them.



By 23:30 Thursday night the Mak was cooled down and pointing towards Mars. I started off with a Baader Orange Longpass filter, the 20mm SWAN's and a TS Optics nosepiece 2.6x Barlow (200x). I don't know who actually manufactures the TS Barlow but I'm sometimes not totally satisfied with the images mine produces. So I thought I'd swap it for the 2x WO Barlow. I thought.



I think now that I'd confused the WO Barlows and had replaced the 2.6x with the 1.6x. Mars was small and not moving very quickly. Even so I could see the southern cap quite distinctly. Which impressed me as it has been shrinking with the Martian summer and I'd struggled to see it a couple of nights previously. I upped the magnification by switching the SWAN's for GSO (Altair) 15mm SuperViews, then 12mm GSO Plossls (now with WO barrels).



I'm pretty sure this was nearer 200x (205x probably) with the Plossls. I used TV Planetary Bandmate and Baader Contrast Booster filters in succession. Although I thought the Bandmate showed the most detail. I even tried the 10mm SvBony 'plastic fantastic' aspherics for a while, but went back to the 12mm GSO's as I didn't think the seeing was up to it. The Terra Sirenum and Aonia Terra were quite distinct, as was the slight gap around the Solis Planum that appears to divide them. I could see northern polar hood clouds. Eventually though the planet Earth clouds came in. I'd got nearly an hour. It wasn't enough!