Saturn, with a lovely Titan BUT NO Enceladus!!!, 4th October '24

[josefk]

Saturn was impressive at times last night/this morning even if the sky overall wasn't too nice with high humidity and poor seeing here in Sth Lincs.

Titan was immediately striking before my eye even fully approached the eyepiece and it remained lovely all night as it swung closely under Saturn - tracking an arc more or less matching the arc of the limb (to my eyes) between about 23:15 and 01:30.

Enceladus started the evening just above the eastern ring (very close to it) and moved out to about 30'' clearance of the rings to the east by the end of the session but i could not see it at all. I was quite confounded that i couldn't see it with this refractor and tried magnifications between x125 and a silly (for this night) x300 in mono and BV combinations. Although the night was poor there wasn't a tremendous amount of glare and in the moments when things were settled and crisp for a few seconds and the sky steady black i felt sure it would show itself but no. No joy tonight.

I did determine the field stop in a 110-degree 4.7mm Ethos is a long long way round the corner (an impracticable long way round the corner for this purpose) as i tried to hold Saturn just outside the FOV to see if it helped shake Enceladus out ! Yet still no EP aberrations even at this acute angle. Impressive.

Titan was in a great position though and a little compensation. Lovely.

I'm 100% confident i was seeing the C-belt last night (at least across the planet - not all the way round) and I'm coming to the realisation i've been seeing it previously but not fully understanding what i was seeing. Last night the key was seeing a distinct difference between a very very thin sharp black shadow below the rings and a soft blue "shadow" above them. Well duh!