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Several of us were having fun at Fremont Peak State Park last Saturday evening Aug 21st. We were observing the Moon with two 5" refractors, two 90 mm refractors and a 30" reflector.
Early Sunday morning Jupiter cleared the trees and by 1:30am the seeing near Jupiter was getting quite good. The NEB was lumpy, a brownish lump on top and a dark blue-gray bar on the southern side of the NEB but a little farther back. There was what looked to me like a light colored string with knots running along the middle of the NEB.
By around 2:00 am the GRS was well in view. (I'm not exactly sure of the time other than I took me about 45 minutes to break down my equipment and I started down the mountain at 4:00am.) The GRS was very pale. There was a small pink area in the GRS. There was a long, thin festoon coming from the NEB well ahead of the GRS and extended back to the GRS. I'm sure there were other festoons but by the time I started looking more seriously they had rotated a little to far around to see well. There was an uneven light area behind the GRS. I wasn't taking notes since we had visitors late into the morning and I was having a good time talking to them rather than observing Jupiter more closely. I'll do better next time. ;-)
Toward the end of the evening when the seeing was getting better I was switching between the 10mm and 16mm eyepieces. I settled on the 16mm. I also was using the AP binoviewer barlow next to the binoviewer sticking in the eyepiece end of the 2" AP Maxbright star diagonal. I'm kicking myself a little for not making a sketch of Jupiter.
Saturn looked very nice even though it was still a little low. With the 10mm eyepieces the crape ring was easy to see the Cassini division was very nice. The "A" ring looked uneven in brightness across its width as usual.
| Scope | AP 130mm f/8 EDT APO refractor |
|---|---|
| Eyepieces | Zeiss abbe orthos 10mm & 16mm plus barlow giving roughly 280x and 190x. |
| Binoviewer | Zeiss/AP/Baader |
| Filters | None |
| Seeing | about 7 (maybe 8) of 10 by the end of the session |