Quick Saturn session

[Ags]

Last night was not an ideal observing night with work to get to on the Monday morning, but the sky was so clear this weekend I couldn't miss the chance. On saturday I could make out most of the main stars in Hercules, which is stupendous sky darkness for my city location.

Wind was gusting very strongly when I set up at 2300 (the scope had been cooling since 20.00) and it made the views very shaky. Saturn was the obvious first target, at its maximum elevation but just about to slide behind a block of flats. The reason for sharing this report is the view I got. With the high wind seeing was poor - the planet stretched and rippled but it stayed sharp. And it seemed that I had attained perfect focus as well last night - not always so easy with a mak.

I could clearly see the the rings were divided into a brighter inner zone and fainter outer zone, and I had a definite but brief glimpse of the Cassini division. These details usually elude me; I usually only see a featureless flat plane circling the planet. The shadow of the rings on the planet was visible as a sharp black line. Three moons were visible - titan, iapetus and one other (I need to check on stellarium tonight).

I finished off with a quick peek at Porrima - a clear split last night - and M3, which looked bright with averted vision. Sadly M13 was blocked by a tree and I had to wrap up for the evening.