2003- I’ve been seeing a few emails about Mars being extremely close to Earth this August 27th, so much that it appears as large as the moon… and having got into astronomy awhile ago, this sounded pretty impossible. It is… http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_mars_encounter.htm

However with our 6″ Dobsonian from Skywatcher, we can get pretty good views of Saturn and Jupiter… and that’s with all the light and atmospheric pollution from the city! It’s pretty surreal to see Saturn’s ring with your own eyes, and you can clearly see 4 or Jupiter’s moons. The 90mm Maksutov (also from Skywatcher) isn’t bad either, it’s much more portable and you can almost get as much detail as the much larger Dob.

Haven’t tracked down Mercury, Venus, or Mars yet, but will get to it one clear night.