Hesiodus and Other Rays

by Bill Arnett

At 1:16 AM -0700 9/19/99, Jane Houston wrote:

Last night, September 18th was a gorgeous mooning night...

and a nice night for planets, too. Jupiter was spendid in the 30". We usually use a 10" off-axis mask for bright objects with the big Newtonian but last night it wasn't necessary. The detail in the NEB was spectacular (though the SEB was unusually bland). And there was a nice pale pink oval in the northern edge of the EZ. The 30" really showed its stuff on this feature: in the smaller scopes it was hard to see and at best just white.

Saturn was its usual glorious self with 5 nearby moons dead obvious. (I had forgotten to make a Saturn moon chart so we probably missed seeing elusive Mimas which should have been easy enough if we had known where to look; ditto for Hyperion and Iapetus). I had my best look yet at the darking in the outer edge of the A ring (Encke/Keeler's Something-or-Other).

But best of all was a nice night away from the city with my friends :-)