Mars observation - image or imagination?

Managed to get out for a spot of Mars viewing with the new Aldiscope last night. I worked my way up through the eyepieces and eventually got a semi-sharp abberated image in the crappy 4mm (175x). I have produced an equally crappy rendition of what I saw using MS Paint :roll: The colours outside the disc are my attemps at showing the abberation but what is of interest is the darker region I saw in what would be the north western area of the planet (upright mirror image). This was very very faint and nothing like as large, stark or as coloured in the image below but what I'm wondering is did I imagine this area or can somebody confirm my observation? Thanks!

Hi Neil

You should check out
skyandtelescope.com/resources/software/article_328_2.asp

This is a piece of software called mars previewer II and you can download it and input local time and date and it will spit out a disc of mars with major visible surface features.

If you do not have luck with that, or if file is too big, let me know what time you were observing and I can post a copy of image here.

Thanks Trevor, that software is very handy. A question regarding it; I presume I should enter 0 for GMT time zone?

I was observing at 20:00 last night (24/11/05) and would love to see any images you may have in or around that time - even if they will make me bemoan the limitations of my cheaposcope :lol:

Neil,
I had a look in starry night for you, and here is its equivilant image for that time.

www.irishastronomy.org/user_resources/fi...mars_sn5pro_crop.jpg

That dark y shapes area is mainly sirtus major according to SNP. On my image in another post , that area has rotated away and is located bottom right hand side of the planet, at the edge.

Very interesting Dave and many thanks. My fuzzy observation actually bears some resemblance to your image which seems more than circumstantial! Mars Previewer shows the same image (presuming I'm right with the 0 time zone setting) but it is "rotated" about 80 deg anti-clockwise to your image? But I am starting to believe that the Aldiscope just about picked out some surface features, just! Anyone else have any images/comments?

Sirtus Major is the most prominent permanent feature on the planet, I've seen it it the little lidl etx70 . One thing to remember is that there is over a 5 hour differance between my image and yours, the planets would have rotated almost 80 degrees in that time.
As for mirror image and back to front etc, that would all depend on if you used a star diagonal or not.