As of 2026 Sep 30, Ls reached 0 degrees, marking the start of spring in the N. hemisphere. Now 29 observers have contributed their work. The polar hood has largely cleared away; earlier a portion had lingered in the mornings, particularly in the longitude of Mare Acidalium. A sign of haziness in the NPC contour, as on the morning side in this Sep 21 drawing by Chris Nuttall, is an indicator of residual hood. (As usual, all drawings and images here are posted with south at the top.)

Upon the still distant martian disk, when imaged at sufficient resolution, the N. cap now shows a darker region towards the limb, marking the place of the unresolved annular cap rift that will become more apparent later as the cap is turned more towards us. See for example the image posted here by Damian Peach for Sep 22; Gary Walker’s images also show this clearly from Sep 26.

Arsia Mons shows its orographic evening cloud. In these images by Gary Walker on Oct   7 it is striking, and we can also see a weak evening cloud at Pavonis Mons (just to the north of Arsia). Observers with suitable blue-violet filters should now be looking for the seasonal commencement of the equatorial cloud band (ECB). The effect often begins in the longitude of Chryse-Xanthe, where an evening cloud such as the one imaged by Walker on Oct 14 becomes extended along the equator in the following direction to form the ECB.

Of the surface features I do not have much to write, but I have suspected slight changes in albedo in the regions of Nilosyrtis and Nodus Alcyonius. These slow changes have been ongoing for some time.

Very recent images from Japan have suggested some dust crossing the southern NPC. The disk diameter is still too small for fine details, but examining the images by Inoue for Oct 10 (posted here) I noticed that a faint dark streak appeared to run from the darker northern part of the cap (mentioned earlier) across the bright part on the morning side in the longitude of Utopia. This must have been dust (of lower albedo) crossing the cap, and it can be seen the next day in images by both Inoue and Ito (and maybe others).

 An illustrated note about the 2027 opposition will be appearing in the December Journal.

And finally, I was saddened to have read on the Hampstead Scientific Society’s website that Doug Daniels, a contributor of visual observations to the Section since the 1950s, had passed away earlier this year. Together with his late wife Julia, he was a stalwart of the Society’s Astronomical section, and for many years looked after its observatory on Hampstead’s covered reservoir. The 6-inch refractor was intensively used many years ago by the late Henry Wildey for his own planetary work. Like Henry, Doug was an excellent artist, and an example of one of his drawings can be found in our 2003 report.

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.

No further information has come to light about the dust storm reported last time, but there has been further dust activity, and more observers have joined in.

Two sets of near-IR images by Frank Melillo (USA) show new and changeable bright dust clouds across central and northern Chryse-Xanthe on Aug 7 and 8. There appears to have been dust at Ophir-Candor too, while on the second date the main cloud extends as far north as Chryse Planitia, the frequently dust-storm active basin bordering Mare Acidalium and Nilokeras. (I have taken the liberty of stacking and enlarging three of Frank’s Aug 7 images together to show the initial clouds more clearly.) Upon receipt of the report, I rapidly contacted all of our contributors in America and Canada (none of whom had yet observed the event) and then posted an alert on the BAA Forum. Mike Karakas (Canada) subsequently obtained a confirmatory lower resolution near-IR image on Aug 9 that clearly shows Chryse filled with bright dust, at the morning limb.

Unfortunately the storm is not observable from the longitude of the UK, and will probably have died out before the region becomes accessible, but sometimes dust activity can occur at the polar hood boundary in the longitude of Utopia, an area which is now visible from the UK, and shown in Paul Abel’s (normal) drawing of Aug 7.

An image by Nick Haigh for Jul 29 shows an E-W elongated belt of white cloud crossing Mare Acidalium, which is a pretty typical appearance for the season.

The western end of this or a similar cloud belt can be seen near the evening terminator in a very high resolution image by Tom Williams taken on Jul 22. On Jul 22 the cloud appears slightly warm-toned, suggesting dust activity could be involved. To be certain of distinguishing white clouds from dust, a set of RGB filter images is desirable.

Furthermore, the polar hood exhibits partial transparency to the north of Mare Acidalium, giving rise to a dark rectangular patch of albedo marking nicknamed “Dawes’ slit” after the 19^th century observer who first recorded it clearly. Another extraordinarily detailed image by Tom Williams from Jul 29 shows this effect very clearly despite the disk diameter still remaining below 5 arcseconds.

Of the surface features, Nepenthes remains invisible, the Oxia Palus-Indus development (2018-) remains prominent, and Solis Lacus is still large and conspicuous (see the image by Tom Williams on Jul 22). All the observations referred to above have been posted here, orientated with south up.

I have not been able to produce the current full list of observers for the front page yet, but hope to do so soon. Good observing!

A number of observers have now joined in, making a total of seven. A list of them will become available on the front page as a Word document. It will be updated from time to time.

Current relevant martian seasonal dates are as follows:

N. Winter Solstice/     2026 Apr 25                Ls = 270
S. Summer Solstice

N. Spring Equinox/     2026 Sep 30                Ls = 360
S. Autumn Equinox

The continual shrinkage of the S. polar cap has been followed, and on May 28 the first hints of the presence of the N. polar hood began to be traced in the systematic images of C.Foster.

A few days ago we witnessed the first dust storm of the apparition. On June 20, Foster captured a bright dust cloud along Valles Marineris, which impinged upon the southern parts of Chryse and Xanthe. This image (06:08 UT) is posted here with the dust storm labelled (south up). The closest available prior comparison is another image by Foster taken on June 17. This shows no sign of dust in the area, when it was then close to the evening terminator. On June 21, images by Foster (05:33 UT) and N.J.Haigh (UK; 05:30-06.41 UT) showed the dust to have dispersed, with the proviso that the disk diameter remained tiny, limiting resolution. Foster’s image of Jun 24 confirmed the cessation of activity.

It is some years now since we had an encircling dust storm, the last one being in 2018. What will happen this year? We shall know for sure well by September 30. The seasonally latest date for the start of such an event remains the encircling storm of late 1924, which commenced at Ls = 311. This same seasonal point will be reached in a few days’ time.

It is now very nearly 50 years since the landing of Viking 1 upon Mars. Back then, we had no doubts in our minds that Mars would have been colonized by now, if not long before. But space exploration took a different direction, the Moon being abandoned, followed by a long romance with the space shuttle, space stations, and a proliferation of unmanned spacecraft. Martian orbiters, rovers as well as a martian helicopter have certainly achieved great technological progress, but the human footprint has so far been conspicuous by its absence.

Welcome to the 2026-27 BAA Mars blog. We shall be covering the observational work of our members right up to and beyond the date of the next opposition, 2027 February 19. I will try to write regular updates, and in later months there will be the usual note appearing in the Journal about martian seasonal dates during 2026-27, and a description of what can be expected to be visible at different parts of the martian year. Meanwhile, the southern hemisphere summer solstice occurred on 2026 April 25, and southern autumnal equinox will follow on September 30.

Observations have begun quite early once again, thanks to Clyde Foster of Namibia. His current images are shown here. They show the large and rapidly shrinking S. polar cap in late southern spring and early summer, and normal albedo markings. Note the intense darkness of Syrtis Minor, preceding Syrtis Major, and the absence or faintness of Pandorae Fretum in the first one. There is an absence of obvious dust activity in these early images, but we must emphasise that the apparent diameter of Mars is barely larger than 4” at the present time. Conditions have only recently allowed synthetic colour images, but the better seeing found in the near-infrared had allowed decent imaging in that waveband.

The Director is now busily writing the 2022 final apparition report, in continuation of 2020. All past reports can be accessed from the link on the front page of the Mars Section website. Meanwhile, blogs for 2022 and 2025 are still to be found on the website.

At this early stage, every single observation will count in maintaining our global coverage of the Red Planet. If you can help, please send in your data as soon as possible.