Saturn and Moon, 23/05

[The Warthog]

Just at sunset last night, with the sky still quite blue, I could see that the view of the Moon was unusually clear, and once I got the scope on it, it did appear to be very sharp, and the seeing was fabulous, even if the transparency wasn't much to write home about. I started out with an 8mm Celestron X-Cel (125x in my 105mm refractor) and soon switched to my 4.3mm Antares W70 (233.3333 x, OK that's pushing it a little, but in skies like this it pushes well.) I didn't bother to bring my moon map out with me, so I just gawked at the wonder of it all. I was able to catch Mons Teneriffe, by Plato. My private name for this is "the bird's foot;" get a look at it and I'm sure you'll agree. One thing I did check on was how small a crater I can reasonable see, and it seems to be 9km.

Moved on to Saturn. It was wonderfully clear, and appeared about the size of a petit pois on my plate, with a small stick through it. I could see hints of shadow on the disk below the ring, and occasional hints of shading on the disk. This Antares/Vixen achro, with a MV filter in place, was giving me no false colour at all. I could see moons on either side of the planet, not too far away, the one to the west brighter than the one to the east. I have seen a moon in that eastern position a few times lately, so I am wondering if I am actually seeing some artifact from my optical system. Apparent moons also appeared to the northwest and northeast of the planet about 1/6th of a degree away, at the edge of my FOV. If someone can confirm those for me, I would appreciate it.

A good night, and I'm hoping to repeat tonight, as there's no baseball on telly this evening.

[nicnac]

sounds like you had a fine night

[John]

... It was wonderfully clear, and appeared about the size of a petit pois on my plate, with a small stick through it...

What a great description WH

Very nice report, I enjoyed reading it.

I find the Sky & Telescope Jave applet is useful to see where Saturns brighter moons are at any particular time. It's linked to from this web page:

SkyandTelescope.com - Planets - Saturn's Moons Javascript Utility

[The Warthog]

Thanks, as it turns out, the moons I was seeing close to the planet were Titan and Rhea, and the two objects further away were stars.

[Llamanaut]

warthog i can confirm seeing exactly what you were seeing titan and rhea and two random stars... i got very excited when i thought it may be a plethora of saturns moons... then i remembered just how small they all are!