Mars reaches the closest point it's been to the Earth in 66,000 years on August 27. Rather impulsively, I went out and got a telescope. The results have not been very good thus far.

I got the Meade ETX-70AT. From what I've read, this is a pretty good telescope. What's really nifty about it is that it comes with a little computer that lets me just select what I want to look and and it will rotate and change angle to point at what I want to see.

This is pretty useful. So I put in Neptune or Uranus or Mars and it will then point at them. So far so good. Haven't had any problem with that part of it.

But TV has apparently spoiled me.

This, naively, is what I was hoping from Mars and Jupiter. Okay, not quite this nice but from Meade's website this is what it says about Mars:

"prominent features on Mars" (this is on the page that talks about this particular telescope).

This is what I'm actually getting. and not nearly as cool as this image (too much light, too cloudy, etc.), but you get an idea of the size and detail of Mars.

(from Weasner's awesome ETX site)

Yes, that's what Mars looks like through my telescope...

I have not given up on it. It seems to be a good telescope. I'm going to try out the various lenses and magnifier do-dads as soon as I can get ahold of them and hope that helps things. Obviously it's not ideal for Mars to go from being a bright spot in the sky to being a slightly bigger spot in the sky.