Finally a clear night. I got everything set up around 8pm and started my drift alignment. I have had trouble in the past with starting in the east (a problem that I tracked down last night to the compass in my iPhone...
..more on this in a minute) so I picked a nice bright star overhead near the meridian - Sirius was very handy. Got that nice and steady - no drift for a few minutes, and then looked for something in the east. Brisbane city is that way from my house and the east horizon is washed out to about 30 degrees, but rising through the murk was a nice bright star about 15-20 degrees up. Line it up with the red-dot, check that it is in the eyepiece.....
SATURN!
I have only had my 8" newt since late last year, and there have been precious few nights that I have been able to get it out, and none since saturn has been up at a reasonable hour, so the only view I have ever had of saturn was when I was a teenager through my state of the art 40mm tasco refractor - it looked like a yellow dot with 2 bumps....
So at first glance through the eyepiece, I just about fell over! A nice crisp yellow disc with some hint (I tell myself) of banding. Distinctly separate rings, but no Cassini division. I had been a little worried about the collimation of my scope - I haven't collimated it since I have had it, and its had a couple of bumps (mostly my own head). But seeing how sharp saturn appeared makes me think its holding together alright.
I had thought that due to their relative sizes and distances, that saturn would not be as spectacular as Jupiter, but I think that at the moment Saturn has my vote - can't wait to see it again when the rings tilt a little more.
More about the iPhone. The compass on mine at least is a little screwy. when you start the app, the compass spins freely to find north, but then after ten seconds or so, its like the free movement disappears, and you need to move it 5 degrees or so to get any change. So sometimes, if you are not paying attention, you might be several degrees out. I think that this was making my drift alignment hard when I started in the east. The mount was so far from true south that it didn't matter how much I changed the altitude of the mount the star would always drift north. So last night I started at the zenith, and had much better success.
Adam
