29th April 2013

[philjay]

29th April             21:45 - 01:00

Clouds cleared after 21:45 to leave a clear sky with 8/10 seeing, still turbulent and good transparency

 

My main aim was to view Saturn and have a laugh at trying a sketch plus trying out the finder in its new position afetr the bracket modification.

 

Equipment

102mm F15 Fullerscopes refractor on manual drive eq mount.

Eyepieces TMP Planetary - 9mm (170x) 6mm (255x), Meade 5000 Plossl 5.5 mm (273x), Sirius 25mm Plossl (61x)

 

Saturn was easily visible from my position between the trees but it was still rather low at 21:45and the sky was still light but it was nice to get my first view of the year.

 

As the sky darkened and waiting for saturn to rise a little further I busied myself with the following:

 

Jupiter - Bright and low in the west this was suffering from turbulence so the image was not up to close scrutiny but the south and north equatorial belts were visible with a little more detail visible at still times. 3 moons visible only, couldnt see if the 4th was in front due to conditions.

 

M13 - Nice and large at 61x. Plenty of resolution in the cluster with plenty of stars resolved down to the core.

M57 - A nice sharp ring easily seen at 61x, quite bright.

A few doubles

Epsilon Lyra, Kappa Bootes, Epsilon Bootes, Castor, Algieba and Porrima in Virgo. I have been watching Porrima open up steadily over the past 2 years and there is a good separation now at 170X.

 

Back to Saturn and I spent a good hour on this planet, I just love sitting and drinking in the view on this planet, swapping eyepieces and trying different filters. There was still some turbulence but there were periods of steady seeing. I should have got 4 moons in fact I thought I had but one turned out to be a background star so only really managed 3. Before hand I had printed off a template for sketching and got a rough idea where the moons should be so here is my attempt. Dead rough and didnt scan very well but its my 1st bash.

 

 

http://www.eastmidlandsstargazers.org.uk/topic/4863-saturn-290413-1st-bash-at-sketching-a-planet/

 

 

 

Packed up at about 01:00 as I was starting to get rather cold as I was not in the observatory so I was exposed to the breeze which was particularly cold at that time.

[Doc]

Lovely report to read Phil.

 

I also observed Saturn last night, I found it very subtle in the colours, hardly anything stood out at all. I thought I detected five moons but then if you are correct about one being a background star it must have been four.

 

Did you see the Cassini division, I couldn't?

[philjay]

Yep Mick, could make out Cassini at times of steady seeing only at the wings as per my sketch, couldn't see it all the way round though, conditions were a bit wobbly. Transparency was good though making deep sky quite nice, I was pleased with Porrima, dead easy to split and a nice clean gap due to the good seeing.

[catman161]

Great report phil-enjoyed that