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It is 9C here but the humidity is 94%, but thankfully I am in the raised observatory on carpet and not on wet ground. I have been working on Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars with the 8" Classical Cassegrain. Seeing was not bad, very stable sky, no swimming, but the transparency was not great (I suspect a bit of fog is settling).
Started about 1:30am with collimation tuning, or that was the plan, turns out it is still spot on. Jupiter was great, all the band's in their glory and the five bright Moons were all lined up on either side (3 &2). Saturn was larger than I recall from a few weeks ago, and will continue to increase in size leading up to the Opposition on 21 July. Hopefully this will help with ring resolution, as currently I believe I will never see the Encke Gap with the CC, just not enough aperture. There was good crisp definition in the rings, and the Cassini Division was very sharp, out at the edge of the A-ring I could see what I believe is the Minima as it feathers out but the Enke Gap eludes me.
From a power standpoint, the conditions limited me to 200x as the sweet spot tonight, which is my 12mm EP on the CC (2400 fl). I tried a 6mm (300x) but while producing a larger planet it lack the clarity of the 12mm. I also tried barlowing the 12mm but it produced the same fuzzy image. Packed up after a tour of doubles out to the east and a look at 47 Tuc, which i had not seen with the CC, it was very large and reasonably bright. Closed the roof at 3:30am and turned on the dehumidifier. A pretty good night.
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