Picture of Mars taken on early morning of Sept 6, 2003. The image on the right is the prediction of how Mars would look like at the time, when I took the picture. The southern ice cap (at the top of the image) is very clear, and the light and dark areas also match with the predicted map. This image is a composite of 15 pictures taken through 8" Meade LXD-55 using Sony DSC-85 at f/2.5 and exposed for 1/50 sec.

Here is a link to some nice Mars pictures from Hubble space telescope. Even with a larger telescope it is hard to take a good clear picture of Mars from Earth, due to all the atmospheric disturbances. This picture is one of the clearest and sharpest taken from earth.