Scope: Bresser Sirius 70mm/900mm

Lenses: H20, H12.5, 2xBarlow

Location: Semi-dark Site

Visibility: Intermittent Cloud

Light Pollution: Medium

Last night was a little cloudy but we could see clear patches and since it looks like it'll be cloudy all week my wife and I decided to try and take a look at Saturn. The wind was knocking our scope around something fierce and at 45x and 72x all we could see of Saturn was a star and I thought that we were going to have the same failed experience we got when trying to view Mars. Then I tried out the Barlow taking us to 90x view and...WOW! You could actually see the rings! Mind blowing stuff!

My wife and I were literally jumping for joy in a darkened field in a virtual hurricane over seeing a tiny dancing blob - but unmistakably Saturn! Our view of Saturn only lasted a minute before the clouds rolled over but it was worth it.

Saturn's rings appeared very thin as a line running from approximately 35degrees clockwise from horizontal. Looking this up in magazine when we returned home I saw that this matched with the published image taking into account horizontal mirroring.

In hindsight perhaps I should have tried to use the 20mm lens with the Barlow for the other planets we have tried to view. At 90x zoom this falls around the 2/3 of maximum possible zoom for our scope and could be a mainstay for this kind of work.

Saturn...wow!