I knew better. I knew it wouldn’t matter that Mars was closer than it has been in 60,000 years. Despite the fact that its one of the brightest objects in the sky over the past few weeks, I knew it wasn’t going to look very impressive through the low power optics of the old telescope I hauled out of the closet. I knew better.But I did it anyway, and it stunk. Mars was no more than a brighter disc with a slight yellowish/reddish tinge. Oh well. Perhaps I was lulled by pictures like this one from the Hubble Space telescope. Maybe I thought I could gaze through the scope and get a close up of the Cydonia Face that made everyone a conspiracy theorist. What was I thinking?! Did I think I might be able to watch it long enough that I would be able to see it spin ? I wish I could have said that my backyard viewing experince was like this guys (1.0Mb) from Sky and Telescope article but alas.
I really don’t know how excited about the little red dot you can get when Mars Global Surveyor is chugging out high resolution shots of the surface everyday and the nice guys at NASA at posting them for free on the internet, but it was nice to get outside for a little while and I can say I looked at it with the telescope.