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Sketched August 31, 2003 from Anza Borrego State Park, San Diego county, CA at 12:30 a.m. pacific DST (daylight savings time) or 07:30 UT August 31. Seeing excellent, transparency LM 6.0.

Date: 08/31/03 Lat 33N, Long 116W, elev. 562 feet Sketch Time (UT): 7:30, (local time): 12:30 a.m. DST
Central Meridian: 48º Filters: none
Instrument: 15-inch f/5 Litebox reflector, Nova primary Distance from earth 0.37 AU, 55.5m km, 34.4m miles
Magnification: (10 mm Radian 180x) Transp. 5/6, Seeing 9/10, Antoniadi (I-V):  I
Apparent Size: 25.04" Magnitude: -2.9

Details about the sketch: I used Michael Portuesi's brand new f/5 15-inch Litebox reflector. 10mm Radian 190x. Sketched from behind the Borrego Springs resort on a night where we invited all the hotel guests for free Mars views. About 50 people took us up on our offer, and many of these saw Phobos and Deimos with us! Longitude 116W Latitude 33N, elevation 562 feet. Seeing 9/10 and transparency 5/6.

Details about Mars: Diameter 25.01 arc seconds (Jupiter is about 30 -50 arc seconds in diameter depending on its distance from earth). Central Meridian 48 - the imaginary line passing through the planetary poles of rotation and bisecting the planetary disk, and is used to determine the longitude during an observing session. Phobos was one Mars diameter away and Deimos was 3 Mars diameters away, both in the same diffraction spike!

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