The term you need is "opposition". Two planets are closest to each other
when the sun and the outer one are on opposite sides of the inner one. It'll
help with Googling.

Uh, did you completely misunderstand something you read? Mars at it's
largest will appear about two orders of magnitude smaller than the moon, and
the next opposition isn't until December 2007.

Try using google to find articles on Mars and "opposition".

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

Jim:

First, forget about Mars. It's just setting at sunset right now and
isn't even in the night sky. Won't be back around for another six
months or so, and then it'll be in the sky just before sunrise. Also,
that story you read is media hype, totally bogus. Even in the best of
telescopes it will never be as large as the full moon.

If you want to try night sky photography with your RB67 (I also have a
couple of them), you will need a telescope (or at least its mount) that
is able to track, that is it needs to be equatorially mounted and
driven with a motor drive to follow the stars. The reason for this is
that in order to expose the film enough to record all but the very
brightest sky objects, the exposure needs to be from several minutes to
over an hour. You also need some method for correcting the driven
mount, for even the slightest deviation in the drive, either from the
mount not being properly aligned or from an effect known as periodic
error, or you will smear your photograph. Will have the same effect as
you movong your camera during an exposure.

I have been able to take some images with meduim format, using a 400
speed film, and with a 90mm lens, about a half-hour (30 minute)
exposure gave pleasant results on the areas of the sky containing the
Milky Way (fairly bright by astronomical standards). This yields
large-field images, but individual obejcts, like planets, galaxies, and
nebulae, appear very small on the film.

Hooking an RB67 up to a telescope is possible, but I wouldn't recommend
it. Not the proper format for astrophotopgraphy through a telescope.

Best of luck.

Brian

Whoa! 'scuse me? What planet are you observing Mars from? How could it
be as big as a full moon on Earth? Either the Earth's orbit changed and
we run the risk of slamming into Mars or Mars has become a huge giant.

All kidding aside, you might want to grab some high speed film and a
locking cable release, find a dark area and try shooting some pix. If
you don't have a guided mount then you'll probably have some star
streaks. I remember there was an article in a photo magazine years ago
from a guy who gave all the maximum times for certain focal lengths
where you won't get star streaks when taking pictures of stars. I'm
sure you can find it at the library. It might have been in Peterson's
Photographics and was sometime in the late 1980's, early 1990s.