A dusty apparition
Mars continues to grace the evening skies in February, long past its perihelic opposition last July, but drawing nearer the horizon night by night. Although the Red Planet has shrunk to a diminutive 7.4 arcseconds diameter, at the time of writing it was still showing off lots of detail through the eyepiece. That wasn’t the case in the months before its closest approach in 15 years. As the planet was poised to put on a great show for observers at opposition with a respectable disk size of 24.3 arcseconds,
