A few years back, having no money for large size scopes or very expensive CCDs, I was observing the sky only visually through either homemade small scopes or the larger (up to 12 inch) scopes of the “V. Urseanu” Astronomical Observatory in Bucharest.
This is the case with the following collage showing the planet Mars at its closest opposition in 2003. Back then I was using my recently homemade 114/900 mm Newtonian on an altazimutal mount from the balcony of an apartment on the fifth floor of a building not too far from the center of Bucharest. Again, in 2003, Romania’s biggest city was way friendlier to Astronomy compared to these days: not too much light, fewer cars, more trees… The seeing was rather good and occasionally I could see the Milky Way…
Now, the Mars drawings: you may notice that a few of the drawings show something reminiscent of Giovanni Schiaparelli’s “canali”. Interesting 😉
maximus photography 