[DobDobDob (Ron)]

Originally Posted by andys

just seen Saturn for the first time!

I saw it last night for the first time also, using 20x80 binoculars, it looked magnificent for me despite having to fight rolling clouds that came in waves at about 1.00am from my near Sydney location.

To me it looked like I was viewing the underside of the planet and on an angle, this made the bottom of the planet from my perspective solid, whereas the top was in shadow and not visible. The planet was elongated in the centre along its equator, where the rings are and I saw one moon which was on the right hand side closest to our Earths moon, I have not yet been able to identify the moons name despite having tables for that reason.

I suspect that when the seeing is better that my view of it will be much better, but nonetheless it was impressive and I now have Jupiter, Saturn and Venus ticked all in my first week, however the continuing bad cloudy nights have retarded my strike rate enormously.

I can only assume I will be out there all night as soon as the first really clear night comes along in Feb.