Saturn - it WAS worth it!

[Paul M]

Yesterday was a stunning day here. I was at work 7 am to 7pm and wondered all day whether it would stay clear into the night and would it be worth setting up the scope to look at Saturn.

It was a train of thought full of negatives. Long day at work; not even nearly dark until very late, Saturn very low down, would it even clear the tree to my south from my observing position?...

In the end I actually had one of those conversations with myself. A stern talking to about not having seen Saturn through my new 10" SkyWatcher, actually having not seen Saturn through any scope for way too many years!

While still talking to myself I installed the latest version of Stellarium to kill some time. Looks very much like the previous version and the label text is still malformed (the bottom of the letters are missing). Anyway, I zoomed in on Saturn to see what elevation it would be at by what time and noticed that Titan was well placed for spotting.

It seemed likely that with the light pollution being worse to my south I'd be lucky to see it.

By 10pm the sky was still perfect and Jupiter was still above the rooves to my west. The deal was done. I dragged the gear out and set up. I still had some wait for Polaris to [removed word] through the twilight. Ok, I didn't need to align for GOTO. I was only going to look at Jupiter and Saturn but decided that I'd hunt down some doubles later on also.

When I came to power up with the SkyWatcher power tank there was nothing. The tank was dead. I took it inside and plugged it in, still nothing no charge light, no nothing. Fuse ok too. It looks like I left the selector switch in "charge" when I put it away last time. That maybe left some charging components in circuit which have drained the battery to death

Luckily I have a mains supply for the mount...

My first alignment star was Vega. Easy peasy. The selection of stars offered for star 2 were all obscure names, other than Zubenelgenubi (sp?) I had no idea and Zuben was down in the murk. No Idea why I wasn't offered Spica or Arcturus but made do with Zuben. Off the mount went and right in  the middle of the field of view was a star. No idea which one but it could have been my target so accepted it.

For the 3rd star I was offered Arcturus so went for that. The scope landed way off, a degree or more. After fine tuning I was told alignment was successful.

First target was Jupiter (while I waited for Saturn to get further out of the gloom). Now only just above the ridges it was boiling like I've never seen before. Terrible seeing. Wasted no more time on that!

Saturn was lower in the sky but not directly over a roof so I turned the scope over there.

To my relief Saturn was much steadier. At 100x Some banding was clearly seen on the disk and Cassini's Division was clear and black. But what were all those other little points swarming outside the rings? I knew one of them was Titan but the others?  

According to SkySafari they were Rhea, Dione, Tethys and Iapetus. 

Bit of a first for me. Even though its a very capable scope I didn't expect to pick out all those moons while Saturn was so badly placed. The sky must have been very clear. It seems that from a dark location I'd have picked out a couple more.

Back to the rings and I tried more magnification. Using my old Fullercope's supplied 6mm Plossl, giving 200x, I could easily differentiate the different surface brightness of the A and B rings and also pick out the dull C ring. 

Just to be silly I popped in the old 2x Barlow I still have from back in the day. Not a good image but 400x is pushing it rather too far. I do wonder how a good 3 or 4mm eyepiece would have performed.

As forecast, last night was a cool one and I'd been outside for 2 hours studying Saturn. I was cold and tired so no double stars for me. I packed away in the comfortable knowledge that it had been a very worthwhile exercise

Just that pesky power tank left to investigate... 

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Great report. Saturn is really inspiring, no matter how often you see it

[des anderson]

nice report,glad you made the right decision

[xtreemchaos]

cool report mate,saturns great at the moment i send ages on it.thanks for sharing.charl.

[Tim99]

I enjoyed your report!  Can't wait to get my Go-To mount and new scope.  Delivery next week sometime.

[MarsG76]

Great report... I had a few great viewing nights of saturn (among other objects) and its quite something else when you can push the magnification on Saturn. I had 3 nights this Saturn season where I magnified Saturn 406X (5mm Celestron X-Cel) and 460X (TV 11mm Type 6 Nagler & 2.5X Powermate combo). The thing that helps a LOT is looking through stacked "contrast booster" and "moon & sky glow" filters.

One question tho.. what is the "removed word"? ha ha