This was taken after the glorious opposition, so Mars had already shrunk to 1/225th the width of the full moon by this time. To put this size into perspective, hold your thumb out at arms length. Mars as seen here is approximately 1/900th the width of your thumb.
I took this with an 8" refractor and a Phillips webcam.
Stumble This
I've told my husband about you. "Deathcow, this guy on VS, is a ruddy-haired fella, beard, funny as hell, loves/had hound dogs and has a backyard planetarium he built himself in ALASKA" He was impressed and envious
He's been trying to get me to move to Alaska for YEARS. I told him not unless he built me a 30 foot geodesic greenhouse there. I'm safe
I can't believe what I'm seeing. Amazing. I think I see canals!
I love Mars and observing it. I wish I would have had the same setup for recording films like this when Mars was 2.5x wider (this mars is about 50 square arcseconds... 2 years ago it got to 320 square arcseconds... imagine the detail I'd be grabbing...)
Now to give you some perspective of size, this Mars you see is ~50 square arcseconds, Jupiter can become almost 1600 square arcseconds in size. Jupiter will be in my skies in 2011 - 2012 big time.