Saturn plus 5 moons - just!!!

[Stu]

Forgetting that the moon would be bright last night, I had hoped for a decent session but it turned into lunar and planetary only. Having been observing the sun during the day, I was expecting wobbly seeing, and so it was in the most part, but much better than during the day of course.

Lovely views of the moon with the binoviewers in the Tak, particularly the Shroter's valley region which was favourably illuminated last night.

I still can't get my head around the BVs. They give fabulous detail for white light solar, and the lunar views were lovely too, but for planets I still get more detail (although less colour) with cyclops viewing.

Being really down to minimalist observing, I am now without my Leica Zoom (enjoy it Derek  ) so am relying on my set of Baader and Meade Orthos, a nag zoom and 24mm Panoptic; it's a hard life .

Saturn itself looked reasonable when the skies steadied, but nothing particularly dramatic so I turned my attention to spotting moons. In the past I've found that less is more in terms of magnification, so I opted for that approach, working up from the Panoptic which wasn't the best for this purpose, too low mag. Onto the 18mm BGO and things picked up, I worked through a range of eyepieces and barlows, mainly the AP Barcon with varying extension tubes to see which was most successful.

In the end, using the 12.5mm BGO with the Barcon at x2 worked best. Titan was obvious, as were Rhea and Iapetus. Any more than this was a struggle, but twice, for a period of a few seconds I picked up two tiny points of light closer in to the rings. Checking SkySafari this morning they were correctly positioned for Dione and Tethys. At other mags they were invisible, and even Rhea was hard. Strangely Iapetus I found quite easy but I guess that's because it was away from the planet. Generally I found the Tak was giving very low light scatter, barely detectable and better since I have cleaned the objective.

This was done between 9.30 and 10pm, with the bright moon and twilight skies so pretty good for a little 4".

Nice to be out again after a little break. Must get the C925 on Saturn soon , or perhaps the moon with the binoviewers.

[Richard Hather]

Wow I have to say that's amazing stu ☺️

I could make out 3 moons on Tuesday I think it was but when I tried my hand at sketching Saturn on Thursday I could only make out 1 on its bottom left which I think must have been Rhea ☺️

Brilliant seeing 5 though good job ?

Richard