Mars is picking up steam in its westward retrograde motion, now moving noticeably away from the Beehive Cluster, M44, and heading toward the Gemini border.  I also observed Mars with my C8 and an ultrawide angle eyepiece yielding about 300x; the view was fairly steady and presented a rather bland side of the planet to us.  Just before midnight local EST, meridian 124° was closest to us, so all I was able to see was the north polar cap and then a dark area along the southern limb, which must have been Mare Sirenum.  Unannotated image