mac
28-05-2010, 10:48 PM
When I was 12 or 13 (a couple of decades ago, sniff), my parents bought me a 60mm refracting telescope - and one of my favourite things to view through it was Saturn. It always appeared as a bright blob with a discernable ring - but no moons, not even Titan, could be seen.
Well, tonight I was sitting down with some astronomy software (SkyVoyager) which I purchased for my new iPhone, and discovered that Saturn was in a prime position for viewing. So out came my relatively new 10" dob, with which (up until tonight) I'd seen Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune - but never Saturn.
Boy, what a thrill to see it through this scope! At 167x it was bright and very sharp at times - and larger than I expected it to be through the eyepiece. The rings, despite being almost on edge, were very clear. I could see five moons - Titan, Rhea, Tethys, Iapetus and Dione. At 278x the viewing started to suffer (fuzzy, hard to focus), due to some haze and the fact that I do most of my viewing from the balcony of an inner city apartment, so light pollution and smog are an issue.
My wife was in bed asleep while I was doing my observing, but I went and gently woke her to find out if she wanted to take a look at Saturn through the scope.
"What does it look like?", she asked.
"It looks like Saturn," I responded.
"Oh - well I don't want to look at it unless it's doing something awesome," she said.
I let her go back to sleep at that point...
Well, tonight I was sitting down with some astronomy software (SkyVoyager) which I purchased for my new iPhone, and discovered that Saturn was in a prime position for viewing. So out came my relatively new 10" dob, with which (up until tonight) I'd seen Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune - but never Saturn.
Boy, what a thrill to see it through this scope! At 167x it was bright and very sharp at times - and larger than I expected it to be through the eyepiece. The rings, despite being almost on edge, were very clear. I could see five moons - Titan, Rhea, Tethys, Iapetus and Dione. At 278x the viewing started to suffer (fuzzy, hard to focus), due to some haze and the fact that I do most of my viewing from the balcony of an inner city apartment, so light pollution and smog are an issue.
My wife was in bed asleep while I was doing my observing, but I went and gently woke her to find out if she wanted to take a look at Saturn through the scope.
"What does it look like?", she asked.
"It looks like Saturn," I responded.
"Oh - well I don't want to look at it unless it's doing something awesome," she said.
I let her go back to sleep at that point...