This morning, the tragedy of an empty food bowl led to the local crew of felines complaining at 0530. After taking care of that, and waking up a little, I took the BT-80 out into the front yard. Saturn was about at the peak of the ecliptic and Jupiter still high up to the southwest. Over in the east, some of the brighter stars in and around Orion were still visible, but the dawn was starting to wash that out.

Saturn...first view this "season" for me. At 112X, it had hints of the Cassini division at the ring ansae but the globe was rather featureless. The sunlight must have already hit enough of the atmosphere between me and Saturn to wash out its moons; in any case I didn't see any.

Jupiter was still in a part of the sky where the background was somewhat dark, and it showed considerable detail. Besides the two main bands, I was getting fairly constant images of several more toward both poles. Seeing to the southwest was very steady, although the image was not enhanced by Ajax occasionallly weaving through the tripod legs while purring away at top volume.

All the cats came out to supervise the proceedings, of course.

When I started looking, 3 moons were showing. As I was observing, the "left" limb of the planet grew a bright bump, which then separated into Io coming out from behind Jupiter. There was an interesting binocular illusion that the moon to the "right" of Jupiter was well in front of the planet, and that Io was behind it. The two moons further out (both to the "left") did not participate in the illusion.