Saturn and Jupiter WOW!

[wavelandscott (Scott)]

It was a good night last night...I am not "hungover" and I feel all warm and fuzzy this morning...

Last night we had some folks over for dinner to visit a bit and to let our kids play (all aged 3-7) together.

I've been letting my oldest son (7 ) use the spotting scope that came with our scope as a handheld scope since I added the Telrad (a handy piece of gear) to our 8 inch reflector...as things began to get dark the kids headed outside with the spotting scope to see the stars...they were all exited even though it was pretty cloudy and not very dark...they were mostly looking at bats...

After a bit of time letting the kids play outside with the spotting scope, I stepped out to see how the kids were doing and I noticed Saturn peaking out just between a couple of trees in our backyard... so completely unplanned, I grabbed our Bintel reflector and wheeled it out back and in about 3 minutes had everyone taking turns looking at Saturn...

Without any cool down and through the clouds and soon to be trees, it was one of the worst visually observing locations (scope moved everytime someone stepped on the porch) and worst sky conditions (trees and clouds) that I have looked through in a long time but, it still brought out a "Wow" from everyone who peered through the eyepiece and generated lots of questions and interest. We did not use a barlow to keep it simple I just used my 11 mm Nagler (an eyepiece that is a peach I might add)

Saturn soon moved behind the trees but, everyone just hung around talking and asking about the scope and what we could see through it etc. while the kids ran around with torches (flashlights) and the finderscope "looking" for stuff...

It was clear that they all wanted to see more so I moved the scope to a better location (off of our back porch) and a short time later we did get a reasonably look at Jupiter again much to everyone's satisfaction...

By this time it was way past the kids bedtime and our guest soon left and I packed everything away to get our kids in bed too.

Again the seeing was mediocre at best but everyone enjoyed the view a great deal...they saw the basic ring shape of Saturn and some bands on Jupiter and not much else in their quick glances but in both cases it was enough to get that all important "Wow"!

So, as I sit here and write this morning I feel warm and fuzzy for introducing some new people to the woinders of the night sky...

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Excellent! That's what its all about isn't it. The WOW factor.