My Night of Mars Watching
Written by Fraser Cain
Since I'm maintaining the list of Mars-related events on Universe Today, it would be a tragedy for me not to get out to a few of the places and look for myself. 
Well, you'll be glad to know I followed my own advice. I invited some friends and we drove about 80 kilometres from Vancouver to the nearby city of Abbotsford to the Fraser Valley Astronomical Society's event at their dark sky park. We arrived just before 10, and the park was absolutely jam packed. I'm guessing there were 200+ people there; fortunately there were at least 20 telescopes set up, so everyone could look through several scopes. The big hit, though, is the society's home-built 20" Dobsonian - a gigantic telescope that had a huge lineup of people waiting to take a peek. Chloe was pretty scared in the beginning; she's never really been in the darkness, but she was a real trooper in the end.
Although there were a few Mars events last weekend, the bulk are going to happen over the course of this next week. I just added 100 new listings over the weekend and I've got another couple dozen still to go through. So, get out there, enjoy Mars and use this opportunity to get better acquainted with astronomy.
You can see the list of Mars events here.
And then why don't you come to the Universe Today forums and share your Mars watching story with the rest of the community? We'd love to hear your experience.
Fraser Cain
Publisher
Universe Today
P.S. NASA is going to be releasing a new photo of Mars taken by Hubble at the opposition. Should be nice.
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