Saturn at dusk.

[Scooot]

It was quite clear as the Sun set so encouraged by my view of the Moon and Saturn in the same FOV yesterday I thought I'd try and catch Saturn before it vanished. So with the bins I had a quick look at the moon, which looked as lovely as ever, and then started panning for Saturn. It was about 7.30 and the sky was still very blue and there was no sign of it. Never mind I thought I'd try with the Dob, but how to find it.

So I thought I'd try by doing a one star alignment using the moon. I put the scope on the EQ Platform, aligned on the Moon and then moved around to where Saturn was meant to be. No sign of it again. I was about to give up and then it occurred to me that if I'm only doing a one star align the scope would need to be level, and it's far from level on the platform. So I took it off and tried again, and there it was.

I haven't really looked at Saturn much this year so I spent about half hour watching it sink. It seemed very noticeable that it was setting faster than the moon, I hope that's right and not my imagination. I was viewing at 64x at first and it was small, with the rings looking like one. Although quite low the atmosphere wasn't ruining the view as much as I expected so I changed eyepieces to 120x. The view was again much better than expected, but not good enough to whet the appetite of serious observers. I could now make out what looked like two rings and a faint band around the planet. It had a pleasant golden/yellowish glow to it from the recent setting Sun which was very different to the stark white I'd normally see at night. Then it started to fade as the clouds rolled in.

It was a fun half hour or so, what I'd call astronomy pottering! and with wishful thinking I've left the scope out in the hope it'll clear up later. -

[stevend]

Although my main target was the first quarter moon I caught Saturn as well this evening just above the rooftops - I am not sure I will see it for much longer though. If you have a low enough horizon Mars is easier and appears first in the blue evening sky.