Waiting for Saturn

[astroron (Ron)]

I am outside waiting for Saturn to get high enough for the first view through the newly refurbished 16" mirror
Guess what it is just been obliterated by a Big cloud and looks like that is it for a while, or the night

[Liz]

Did you see Saturn in the end?
I want to see saturn too, but te Moon is around for awhile.
The cyclone has taken the (most) cloud out to sea, yeah, so may have a chance tonight.

[astroron (Ron)]

Originally Posted by Liz

Did you see Saturn in the end?
I want to see saturn too, but te Moon is around for awhile.
The cyclone has taken the (most) cloud out to sea, yeah, so may have a chance tonight.

Hi Liz , No the clouds just blanketed the sky so I gave it away at 02.30.
The Moon shouldn't make much difference when looking at the brighter planets.
Getting the 16" out again was great anyway
I hope you get a look tonight
Cheers

[Liz]

I want to see the Saturn storm, so I reckon 'good seeing' is pretty crucial. I might try and give it a shot tonight, better go and check out Stellarium.

[Paddy (Patrick)]

Good to hear that you got your mirror at last Ron. I got my scope out for a 2 am go at the storm on the weekend. I was so tired that I forgot to put one of my weights on the back of the scope before loading up the front end with fat eyepiece and parracor. the scope swung down, off its mount and the jolt pulled one of the secondary holder wire attachment points off. Very disturbing. So no storm. Still, some araldite and the secondary is all fixed and I think better collimated than ever. Here's hoping for another go, but it seems Jupiter's dad doesn't want us to look at his blemish.

[pgc hunter]

Originally Posted by Paddy

Good to hear that you got your mirror at last Ron. I got my scope out for a 2 am go at the storm on the weekend. I was so tired that I forgot to put one of my weights on the back of the scope before loading up the front end with fat eyepiece and parracor. the scope swung down, off its mount and the jolt pulled one of the secondary holder wire attachment points off. Very disturbing. So no storm. Still, some araldite and the secondary is all fixed and I think better collimated than ever. Here's hoping for another go, but it seems Jupiter's dad doesn't want us to look at his blemish.

Ouch! Lucky your scope got out alive! Only had 1 look at Saturn so far, in ultra crap seeing so yeah haven't got a decent look in. And probably won't either this summer. Either it's cloudy, or if it's clear seeing is extremely crap.

[Paddy (Patrick)]

Originally Posted by pgc hunter

Ouch! Lucky your scope got out alive! Only had 1 look at Saturn so far, in ultra crap seeing so yeah haven't got a decent look in. And probably won't either this summer. Either it's cloudy, or if it's clear seeing is extremely crap.

Well, its not quite as bad as it sounds as the "OTA" just falls off the rails with a jolt but still stays on the mount. I was quite surprised about the secondary - I couldn't work out why I couldn't see anything in the ep when the scope was pointed in the right direction then saw that the secondary was dangling a tad. Still, it will help me remember to set up in the right order!

And I agree that even had I got a look at the planet it would have been quite ordinary especially at the altitude it had reached at 2 am. After I fixed the scope I did a bit of a star test and had a look at Jupiter and it was just mush. So, yep seeing is a big thumbs down at the moment.

[pgc hunter]

Apparently the poor seeing is caused by large amounts of moisture/water vapour in the atmosphere this record crap summer, so I've heard, it seems believable considering that in other summers I've gotten much better viewing. Had one excellent night in November, where I could get a decently crisp Uranus at 534x, Same night I had Jupiter at just over 300x, but that was it. The rest has been custard and custarder.

Last time I was viewing Saturn at 167x, no crisp resolution at all. The planet seemed a bit fuzzy, the focus lacked that razor sharp snap that any half decent seeing would yield at this lowish power.

[ZeroID (Brent)]

We've had 'soup' skies over as well when it isn't cloudy or raining. Took some pics a week ago and they were just mush balls. I need southerly blow to clear the crud away, not this warm wet NE wind that keeps blowing at present.

[Mars (Patrick)]

Finally the clouds cleared up late last night - must have been around 2am and I saw Saturn for the first time in my scope. It was quite amazing!!

I'm assuming the seeing must have been rather decent because I managed 240x zoom using a 10mm eye-piece and 2x Barlow on my 8" Dob. I've never been able to use the Barlow with good results previously (at least on Jupiter). Saturn looked crystal clear to me, like a photograph. In fact it was difficult to comprehend that I was really looking at the planet and not at a still image of it. It sure drifts out of the view quickly though at that zoom without tracking.. only takes about 5 seconds.

[Suzy]

Originally Posted by Mars

. It sure drifts out of the view quickly though at that zoom without tracking.. only takes about 5 seconds.

A widefield eyepiece will give you ages to look at the planet (say 70 deg).Also, big globs like Omega Centauri & 47 Tuc will show you the full view in a 10mm at high mag as the 10mm 50deg eye piece that come with the scope doesn't give the full view of these objects at high mag.

[astroron (Ron)]

If the weather stays clear I am going to give my averted imagination http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/....milies/lol.gifanother go tonight and see if I can spot the Storm
Cheers

[rmcconachy]

Part of an email I sent to a sometimes observing friend this morning (note that I don't focus on planets much and I'm sure my nomenclature will be all wrong - apologies in advance):

"Saturn was very nice later in the morning (say 4-5am) when it had risen a bit higher. I could clearly see the gap in the rings in the ansae, Saturn's shadow on the rings to one side of the planet and the rings' shadow across the face of the planet. There was also a definite brown belt (like a less saturated version of Jupiter's NEB or SEB), a little dusky shading on the pole slightly facing us and what looked like a slightly whiter and brighter than normal colour for Saturn between the two, i.e., a little whiter/brighter than the normal light yellow colour of the planet. I spotted four moons too: Titan (obvious), Rhea, Dione and Tethys. I don't know if I saw Iapetus or not, it might have been bright enough to spot (mag 11.5 making it 0.7 mag fainter than Dione) but I wasn't paying attention to objects laying as far away from Saturn as Iapetus was while I was observing (instead of checking where the moons were and then looking for them I just remembered what I saw close around Saturn and then matched them up later, Iapetus was outside the area I memorized). All the above was best seen at 140-190x magnification."

I didn't realize it at the time but the brighter patch I was seeing is the smeared remains of the white spot that appeared a couple of months back. I could tell that the smear wasn't quite symmetrical across the face and varied in width in places but that's about it in terms of detail. My observations were made this morning (Sat 29/1/11 local time) from my Melbourne suburban backyard overlooking other houses which no doubt contributed to the local seeing only supporting a fairly low magnification ceiling. The scope I was using is a 14cm aperture refractor.

[astroron (Ron)]

After many attempts I finally thought I caught a glimps of the of the storm at about a quarter to two, but was not able to repeat the observation,so can only put this down to a maybe
The seeing was only about 4-5 out of 10 with light cloud interupting the observations
Called it a night at 02.05.
Cheers