2026 September 7

Mars Opposition Blog 2026 September 7

Richard McKim

On Sep 7, Ls reached 349^o; late winter in the northern hemisphere. A large polar hood continues to cover the northern limb, and sometimes it has been interrupted by a dark marking which causes a deviation in latitude of its southern edge towards the north. This has recently been observed in the longitudes of Utopia and Mare Acidalium, as in the past. Another feature characteristic of the end of winter is to see the hood extending to lower latitude at the morning limb, as we can see upon G.Walker’s images from the USA on Sep 1. The hood is noticeably smaller and less bright in red light, and now perhaps we can already see the ground cap in the red images. However, the diameter is still only 5.1 arcseconds, making judgement difficult. Any high resolution work will therefore be appreciated.

Walker’s images also show evening white cloud activity over Tharsis. Another observer on Sep 1 was D.Basey (UK), and his blue-violet image also shows a brighter and lower latitude condensation within the hood on the morning side.

Coverage of the planet both in time and longitude continues to improve, and I am posting some recent images by T.Akutsu (Aug 24, from the Philippines), M.Hood (Aug 20, USA), O.Inoue (Sep 1, Japan) and M.Morita (Aug 30, Japan) here. Note that two of them are now using WinJUPOS simulations based upon the current albedo maps of Makoto Adachi. There are currently 22 contributors.

Long-time Section member D.Gray has also posted his drawings on the Cloudy Nights Forum, from where these views of Aug 15 originate. The tiny disk of Uranus was observed and drawn on the same morning, and Mars was only a little larger! Note the pale borders of the Elysium region, which have been faint for many apparitions now.

The Chryse-Xanthe dust storm reported in the last post has since ended.

Finally, revised lists of observers for 2022-23, 2024-25 and 2026-27 are now posted on our front page.