I'm having a ball at high power tonight, with much better than usual seeing from my backyard. Of course, there are cloud fields moving through and I'm in and out of the house chasing sucker holes. So far, it's been a good crop nevertheless.
Mars is showing its busy side tonight, and I'm seeing two distinct white patches besides the polar cap, probably limb clouds? The details come and go a bit, as they do, but they are better than I've seen all month.
I've been trying to chase some doubles from my long to-do list, especially Zeta Boötis, but the clouds have only cooperated to show me Porrima so far. Good old puppy-eyed Porrima
I love that double!
Just then I had a terrific, steady and sustained view of Saturn, with great colour differentiation between pale rings and orange, stripey planet, some structure in the outer ring past Cassini (which I'm telling myself is Encke
), and a translucent inner ring.
I'm using my trusty 6" f/12 MK67 for all this of course, and mostly the 5mm LV for 360x! I also got to check my collimation on a real star at high power, the seeing is that good
If the clouds keep breaking up once in a while like this it could become a long night...
Cheers
Steffen.