A new year and finally a clear day

From the looks of my last blog, it looks like we've had a bleak winter so far for observing. Most of December was either cloudy, lit by a full moon, or occupied by a cruise to the Yucatan. January hasn't been much better. It finally cleared off this weekend and I was able to set up my ETX and check out Mars, coming up about 8:00pm. It made it over the top of my neighbor's shed about 10:00 and I was able to get a good view with my 10mm ep and 2x barlow. I appeared as a not so crisp reddish ball about the size of the letter 'o' in my eyepiece. Since the diameter of Mars is only about 14" that gives me a good idea of what to expect the next time I try to split a double with the ETX. The Autostar did a good job of holding Mars in the center of the FOV even at high power (70x). I was not able to make out any detail on Mars.