Saturn at it's finest

May

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Where I live, in the Midwest part of the United States, the jet stream tends to be mean. Mean in the sense that it likes to sit right above where I live and make viewing planets less than ideal.

Except last night.

Wow... was that a treat. It was supposed to be cloudy - actually, rainy. I was testing a new motor drive for a smaller scope on the Moon as the sky was getting dark. Then, out of the blue - literally - there it was, Saturn, sitting above a neighbor's house, right where it should be at that time of night. I put the smaller scope away, and brought out the 6" f/5 reflector. As I kept changing eyepieces, and increasing magnification, I wondered, "Will I have to stop around 125x or 150x like usual"? Last night turned out differently.

At 240x, the planet seemed "etched" onto the background of the sky. That was using a 3mm planetary eyepiece by Astro-Tech. A lot of times, that eyepiece has given me somewhat fuzzy views, and I always wondered if it was the eyepiece, or the seeing. Well, it's NOT the eyepieces! I even have 2.5mm eyepiece from TMB, before they stopped selling them. Putting that in the scope, I was now at 300x magnification.

Planetary pictures never do "the real thing" justice, but here's what I managed to capture using my cell phone camera through the telescope last night. Given the conditions - and the camera - I think this was pretty darn good. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.