Arty68

You might want to look into getting an 80mm to 120mm good refractor between f/8 and f/10. My Sky-Watcher ED 100mm f/9 has perfect collimation [I'm not saying they will all be perfect, may be I got lucky] and produces better images of Saturn than my 8" SCT. I can see the Ring Nebula even though I live in the city with the 100mm, and now with all of the smoke in the air I can still see it. Bigger scopes will show a brighter image however they are also heavier. Winter and spring should produce some good seeing, unfortunately Saturn and Jupiter will be low in the sky in the spring, however by early May Jupiter, Saturn and Mars will be easy to find around 5a.m. or so, if you can see that far East and Southeast. I hope you can get well soon.

It looks like the most likely culprit is wild fires.

Light scatter does not change when I move my eye around the eyepiece. Both diagonals are silver. The lenses are relatively clean, only a very slight amount of dust particles, I keep they covers on them when not in use. You present some good ideas. It looks as though the problem is smoke from wild fires, something I did not take into consideration.

I never thought about smoke from wild fires. I looked the information up and - there is a lot of smoke in the atmosphere and it is most likely the problem. Thank you for your help. My diagonals, both were supplied by the manufacturer, 1 1/4 for the Meade and 2" for the Sky-Watcher.

Light scatter does not move when I move my eye around the eyepiece. Thank you for your help, I appreciate your experience.

EDIT: Before going any further, please note that I have checked maps for smoke filled skies and that is, by far, the most likely culprit. The thought of smoke from wild fires entered my mind, however I pushed that idea out of my head and blindly pushed forward. The result was poor seeing without much of an answer to why, given my equipment and the good state that it is in. If anything, hopefully this post will help the next person with poor views of the heavens, at least until the smoke clears. Here is one map source, note that it changes, sometimes relatively fast: https://fire.airnow.gov/ I recently got back into astronomy after decades of absence. I live in town and visibility is usually poor to very poor. Telescopes: a Sky-Watcher f/9 100mm ED refractor with outstanding collimation and a Meade LX65 8" f/10 ACF Catadioptric with GoTo mount, I can put both scopes on the same mount/head. This evening I mounted both telescopes & rechecked the collimation on the 8". Primarily I wanted to view Saturn. It came out from behind some trees at about 10:00p.m. EDT. By about 12:30a.m. this morning views of Saturn was about as good as it was going to get. I could see the Cassini Division but barely and I could see Titan, Rhea, Dione and Tethys. Enceladus was too close to Saturn and I couldn't see it for the glare/light scatter. I could make out a little color in the clouds on Saturn. Unfortunately the light scatter in the eyepieces was so bad that it nearly ruined the view. If it were not for the light scatter everything I saw would have been much better, crisper more detailed. I have a variety of eyepieces that I have picked up over the years, none top end but should get the job done, and every one of them had a great deal of light scatter with the University Optics 12.5mm Ortho giving the least amount of light scatter. Eyepieces are: 5.5mm 62 degree & 14mm 82 degree Explore Scientific, 6mm & 12.5mm UO Orthos, 7.5mm Orion Epic ED-2, 9mm Fujiyama Ortho, 32mm Meade Plossl, & a very old Celestron Ultima SV series 2x Barlow [the good one, model 93506]. All are 1 1/4" [don't have the money for good 2" eyepieces]. I have a series 4000 f/6.3 field flattener for the Meade telescope but I didn't use it last night on planets. Does looking at a light filled sky in town have an impact? Should I try to paint the interior of the eyepieces?

After you watch the video that John posted you may want to watch this one on another important topic. Telescopes that have mirrors need something called collimation, look into it after you figure out the basics of your telescope.

I live in Marion, don't belong to a club. In decades past I have made visits to the Dayton observatory and Columbus.

I used to star hop with my 8" and 10" Newtonians. As I grew older the heavy scopes fell by the wayside. I now have a Sky-Watcher 100mm ED refractor with perfect collimation and a Meade LX65 8" f/10 ACF Catadioptric with GoTo mount. Currently looking for an affordable mount for the 4" refractor, I can mount both scopes on the Meade head however another mount would be easier to transport out of the city for darker sky. I am an old guy and don't have the strength and stamina of my youth. Looking forward to good conversations in the future on this forum.