first cassini and some new galaxies to boot

[WayBig]

The main aim last night was to take advantage of the moon being out of the way and pick out M95, as it's evaded me to date.

Well, it evaded me again, M96 was easily visible but I just couldnt see 95. So I decided to find some brighter ones that I hadnt yet seen, I moved onto M63, the sunflower galaxy, then on to M106 and NGC2841, all were fairly easy to pick out, and showed their elongated shapes.

Well a thin layer of cloud moved in so I decided to check out Saturn, and wow wow wow, despite being very low, the atmosphere was pretty still and I was getting good views. I mainly used my new explore scientific 6.7 mm and found that the conditions were good enough that I could barlow it to an unfeasible 358x magnification and still see good detail. I spent the best part of an hour following it watching for moments of atmospheric stillness. For the first time ever I could easily make out the cassini division, cloud bands and 3 moons in a nice triangle around the planet.

Before I packed up, I thought I'd check out NGC4565, the needle galaxy, having seen carol's sketch of it in Sky at Night. A nice elongated shape in the eyepiece, though nothing like the detail that Carol gets from her dark sky site.

That was it, a really enjoyable evening. I'm really enjoying the new ES 82deg eyepieces, great contrast, better even than my skywaycher aero, showing more definition on galaxies, and I was amazed how sharp the 6.7mm and 2x barlow combination was.

Roll on sunday, looks like more clear skies...