We finally had a break in the clouds (here) last night (02 Aug). Unfortunately, the sky only cleared after Jupiter was hidden by my western treeline. That left, from west to east, Saturn, Mars, Neptune, the Moon and Uranus. Saturn and Mars were easily targeted. Neptune was very low on the horizon and the atmosphere was just too turbulent to get any useful pictures. At around 3 billion miles away, Neptune is less than 20 pixels wide using my optics. By the time the Moon was in view, the clouds had started to close back in and I shut everything down.
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It appears obvious that the planet wide dust storm on Mars (there) is finally starting to dissipate. The storm was first observed on the planet by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on the 30th of May. NASA reported that by the 13th of June the Opportunity rover was dealing with total darkness the entire 24h 37m Martian day. Being solar powered, it had to go into survival mode when the atmosphere became too clouded with dust to charge its batteries. The last contact with the rover was on the 10th of June.
I have not heard any word yet on whether or not Opportunity has survived the storm.
These images were taken with my secondary scope. I had to dismount my 10″ Newtonian to get the primary camera power supply out of the mount for troubleshooting. The 10″ is cumbersome and mounted high enough that I had to get some help to get it down (thanks Dennis). I am able to mount/dismount my 8″ SCT without help so that was pressed into service until my deep space camera returns to operational status.