by Peter Natscher
PTerzian@aol.com wrote:
Thanks to Marsha for pointing out two faint doubles in the trapezium, to Albert and Peter for their fabulous views of Saturn in their Dobs, including direct vision views of Enceladus...
... and Mimas, through my 20" Starmaster. I haven't seen Mimas since the last Saturn apparition. After a few hours of 20" planetary blur (couldn't use anything on Saturn above 250X), the seeing finally broke wide open by 11pm. Saturn, and Jupiter showed much what the 20" should be able to pick up. I was using a TeleVue Bino with two Zeiss 10mm Abbes bringing 432X. I was occassionally seeing rings within the B-ring itself. Encke minima was easy and tiny Mimas lay between the A-ring and Enceladus. They're so close to Saturn, in an hour's time I saw the two move in relationship to eachother.
Jupiter also looked fab with many trailing white ovals in the Great Red Spot's wake. What a nice color combination with the pink GRS and blue-white ovals. The mottled North Equatorial Belt had a few large and pretty red barges. The GRS showed its 360-degree swirl within. It's interesting how the NEB now looks redder than the GRS.
I can't remember which NGC (930?) it is but I still think this large and ghostly edge-on galaxy in Andromeda (just east of Gamma) is my favorite edge-on. At 250X, I was seeing plenty of dark matter detail in this one. It held up well in my binoviewer, too. And, the field stars that lie all around it give the whole view a 3-dimentional effect.