by John Gleason
The clear and hazy sky of Friday night, November 24th got me out with my small 6" f/7 finderscope. The planets, riding high in the southeastern sky were a splendid site for jg and his observing partner. I would not have expected to see it, but during very long periods of arcsecond and infrequent subarcsecond seeing, Saturn's Encke division (about 325 km in radial width) was clearly visible at 355X using the wonderful Takahashi 7.5mm LE's and the Zeiss Binoviewer. I'm not referring to a minima, but a sharply defined thread-like ring division. "Keul" I had only seen this once before in a 7" f/9 refractor. Pretty amazing for a paltry 6" telescope. The "B" ring between Cassini's division and the planet itself was softly shaded, but uneven in its brightness and appeared a light gray and milky white color. No hint of spokes. The whole scene begged for more light then the 6" lightsipper could put out. Drats, I didn't bring the 12.5" mindbender scope - which is another story. As for Cassini's division? So broad and expansive, it wasn't sharp edged, but somewhat softer along the leading edge toward the "B" ring then it was toward the "A" ring.
Jupiter nearly knocked me off my observing stool when I slewed it into the eyepiece. It's moons were all sharply defined disks with Ganymede showing a well defined brighter limb toward Jupiter. Try as I might, 533X did not reveal any surface shadings on Jupiter's largest moon, but it was interesting to witness a "Mars" size image through my 4mm Lanthanum and Barlow combination. A single diffraction ring was sharp and concentric around the distant Jovian moon.
The Great Red Spot was transiting. Subtle shading was visible within it's turbulent storm vortex, with a light colored brow along a leading edge. The polar regions broke into what looked like an ill-defined pot of boiling liquid. Subtle shades of blue and gray were visible along the reddish equatorial regions. All of these observations made between 11 pm Friday and 1 am Saturday morning.
To conclude, the massive 31mm "TermiNagler" was brought out of it's Cordura case and attached carefully to the freshly cleaned AP Maxbright diagonal. The target was M42. The real-time Schmidt camera view revealed a vivid blue-green core of nebula surrounding the famous Trapezium. "Hello old friend." The 34X and exceptional seeing yielded stars of extraordinary definition. Beautiful blue-white diamonds strewn across a field of blue-green nebula, with subtle pink coloring on the western edge of the nebula. Breathtaking.