[g__day (Matthew)]

Hey folk,

Yesterday I tried some visual astronomy for the first time in ages on the smaller of my 3 scopes (80mm Williams Optics Megrez refractor and 127mm Skywatcher MAK). I wanted to have a look at Saturn and check my mounts alignment after little use in the past 6 months.

I focused my smaller OTAs using a Bhatinov mask on Spica, then locked on Saturn. I was using a 8mm Vixen LWV eye piece on the Megrez (60x magnification) and a 22mm then 13mm LWV eyepiece on the MAK (68 and 115x magnification respectively).

My C9.25 is set up for imaging - so I didn't touch it. Now I noticed Saturn was reasonably sharp for 20 - 30 minutes until the clouds rolled in - so seeing was only average and we had a 1/3 moon. But focused correctly neither scope (or my eyes) would see the Cassini division.

So to my question - is it most likely that this is:

1. Seeing related
2. The angle Saturn is inclined at present makes it hard to split the Cassini division in poor seeing at low magnification
3. An optical alignment issue with my smaller OTAs
4. My eyes - getting old!

Many thanks for your help.

Matthew