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Courtesy U.S.N.O.
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Planetary Observations

Most of my planetary sketches were made using coloured filters. Since purchasing a set I've found them to be invaluable for enhancing contrast and even improving the effect of poor seeing. The table below gives an indication of which filters work best, but there are no hard and fast rules.

Yellow

General increase in contrast on Jupiter, Saturn, Mars

Orange

Works well on Mars, Saturn, and to a lesser extent on belts and zones of Jupiter

Green

Polar caps of Mars, helps to highlight Jupiters' Great Red Spot

Blue

Works well on belts and zones of Jupiter

Violet

A bit too dark for Jupiter, but works well to reduce to the glare of Venus


Mars

Here is a series of drawings of Mars made during June 1999. You may notice that the disc of the planet isn't quite circular, this is because Mars was showing a gibbous phase at the time.

You can clearly see how the major features visible have "moved" across the face of the planet due Mars' rotation period being slightly longer than that of the Earth.
18th June 1999 20th June 1999 24th June 1999 25th June 1999

All the drawings were made at the same time of night - 10:15pm.

Mars - 2003

Mars - 2005

Jupiter

1999
4th October 1999 5th October 1999 6th October 1999
6th November 1999


2000
29th Sept 06:00am 2nd October 06:18am

Saturn

This sketch made on 4th March 2001 was done under exceptionally good seeing conditions. The A ring (outermost) was quite a bit darker than the B ring (middle), occaisonaly when the seeing suddenly improved for a second or two to absolute perfection I could glimpse the Encke division. The B ring was quite bright and the Cassini division was crisp and clear all the way around the rings. The C ring was visible as a quite dark band on the inner edge of the B ring. The only other time when I've had such good views of Saturn were a few years ago under identical conditions; temp -5C, quite hazy with a 1st 1/4 moon not far away.