Saturn 10/05/10

[Earl]

Time to test out my new 6inch Celestron SCT, and with Saturn hogging the sky I decided to make this tonights test.

I did have a quick look at Mars, its in the worst light pollution zone for me.. (huge spotlight on garages) I could see it was a planet and redish, with a hint of shades.

But back to Saturn, I have built up a selection of eypieces over the last few weeks so I decided to give them a spin while looking a Saturn. Working my Way down from 40, 32, 25 and then 15 I was getting excellent viewing with the occasional fluter, I decided to get the 9mm out, and at this point things start to degrade but still viewable, I moved to my 5mm, now im really impressed with the X-Cel and I will get some larger ones to play with.

With the 5mm, obviously tracking plays apart, and as i have been unable to get my motors working on this new scope, i was doing it by hand, not to bad, but when changing eypieces i have to do it quick enough so the image drifts into view centrally.

What I saw:

The Planet hinted at signs of banding and visable shadow of the ring just under the ring.

I could only make out 1 moon Titan, then at first i though it was my eyes playing up, but i caught sight of a fainter a redder moon Rhea and at 10.19 magnitude im very pleased to of got this view, this i confirmed for a while, noticing that this fainter moon was more obvious as it drifted across the central area of the eyepiece.

I Cant wait to move to darker skies not long i hope

[richbyers]

yes not too long hopefully!

pleased you had success, especially with hand guiding

rich