December 26th 2007, Lubbock, TX (In my backyard)
I setup the C8 at 11:22pm and left it for about 40 minutes. My plan tonight was to view Mars. Just after midnight I started observing with the 32mm Televue Plossl just to center Mars. I quickly moved to the Meade UWA 6.7mm and a No. 25A red filter, the view was still a little turbulent so I switched to a 10mm Televue Radian and a No. 21 Orange filter, I could see a dark patch in the shape of the capital letter Y covering about 1/2 the planet, the polar cap looked to be at the 2 oclock position. After 20 minutes I switched to the 6.7mm and the view was better. I tried the No. 15 Yellow and No. 21 Orange filters with the 6.7mm, of all the filters I liked the No. 21 best. It looked like between the top of the right side of the Y-shaped dark patch and the polar cap there was another small dark patch. I viewed Mars for about 30 minutes, I also tried a combination of the color filters and my V-Block, I was hoping for a contrast improvement but saw none. I switched over to Castor to see if I could split it, I was able to easily with both the 10mm Radian and 6.7mm UWA. I then moved over to M42 and viewed it with the 32mm Televue Plossl, it was very nice. The moon was pretty bright so I packed it in at about 12:58pm.