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by transportguy 1767 days ago
the drawing of orion is unimpressive, as it is easily visible and drawable to a similar quality with any telescope or even binoculars if you have clear skies. Spotting any sort of features on mars requires huge magnification incredible steadiness and an ability to track the object. Drawing the details for Mars required magnitudes more ability and far better technology.
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For reference, Orion is about 3,600 arcseconds wide [http://spider.seds.org/ngc/revngcic.cgi?NGC1976], whereas Mars is from 4 to 25 [https://web.archive.org/web/20100612092806/http://nssdc.gsfc...] depending on its distance.