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Entry from last night's journal


Andrew*

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Had a great night last night observing Mars and Saturn and just thought I'd share the sketches I made straight from my observing journal, fresh and untouched!

Mars was showing finer detail than I'd ever seen. Some of the detail isn't showing on Starry Night, but most of it seems genuine and I was dead pleased. I used the Neodymium - it seems to do a brilliant job on Mars. The phase is clearly less full than a few weeks ago. Time was 9.30-10

Saturn just did NOT want to show detail in the Southern Hemisphere (although I didn't try the Neodymium - D'Oh!), but I did in between catch glimpses of a slight dimming in the South. There was a clear northern band, and a very faintly discernable one very close to the rings. Not sure what this was. Another mysterious thing was that the disk seemed to be slightly "squashed" at the south pole. The cassini division occasionally was apparent as dark dots... Moons observed are Dione, Titan and Iapetus (thought it was a star as it's so far off the plane). Immediately to the west of the rings I kept vaguely seeing what looked like another moon, but I couldn't be sure. I must have been seeing Mimas as well... Time was 10.30-11.

Andrew

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lovely sketches Andrew, nice to see them without being re-done later.

i too have struggled to see anything of note on saturns disc this year, it just looks so much paler than usual, and the seeing always seems to get worse when turn my attention from mars to saturn too!

is 'the neodymium' a filter? i have only heard of neodymium magnets before?

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Cheers guys.

Excellent sketches Andrew :(

Were you using your 120mm ED ? Looks like you got a good image of Mare Acidalium

Yes - the 120mm ED. It's brilliant :). I have no knowledge of martian geography yet so I'll take it from you. :eek:

lovely sketches Andrew, nice to see them without being re-done later.

i too have struggled to see anything of note on saturns disc this year, it just looks so much paler than usual, and the seeing always seems to get worse when turn my attention from mars to saturn too!

is 'the neodymium' a filter? i have only heard of neodymium magnets before?

Sorry - yes. Look here: Light Pollution Reduction - Baader Neodymium Filter

It seems to me a bit of a "magical" filter - it does a good job on LP and on Mars from my experience, but apparently it can do much more besides. I don't usually use filters for planetary observing, but I had to try it out and I think it helped me see more.

Cheers

Andrew

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Great sketches at the eyepiece. I should post a pic of the child like scribbles in my observing book and give you all a laugh. Those 120EDs seem like excellent bits of kit. You've pulled more detail from Mars than I managed with my 200mm reflector the other night (although the seeing was rather pants!).

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These are fantastic Andrew! :headbang: I like the way you darkened Saturn's background... nice touch.

Also, i agree with Chris.. it's nice to see sketches that haven't been re-done. These are pure and fresh, like you just turned around and handed them to me straight from the eyepiece.. Kudos! :p

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Thanks for your kind comments! I was originally thinking of cropping each sketch down, blackening the background etc., but I thought in the end the raw untouched approach would be most honest!

cheers

Andrew

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