Of course it rained the latter part of the week. I have a three inch refractor that had been waiting for first light. The weather cleared friday and as soon as I got home, the moving blankets went over the deck railings. A couple of rugs rolled out, my deck becomes an observatory. I set up the three inch and a ten inch dob, times two barlow and a case full of eyepieces.
The view of saturn was the best ever. The ten inch had near perfect focus at two hundred times. The Keeler gap or Encke's division could be easily be seen where the rings make the turn on both sides. Even close to the moon, Saturn's moons made a great show. They made me think Saturn could be wearing a necklace.
I looked at Jupiter with the three inch scope at about ninety times. Humph only three moons showing, wait there is that little black circle. The forth moon was there in transit. Wow! the scope works. Next I looked at saturn and clear as could be Cassini's division. My Short Tube eighty would only hint at seeing cassini's division This f-7 number is a lot better.
The longer length scope is pushing my Telvue upswing mount head and tripod just a little. I judge it to be quite useable up to a hundred and twenty times. Any more than that I'll have to wait until I have it on the Lx-200 . I was able two focus at that high power by judging the blackness of the space between saturn and its rings. A snap focus seemed to work the best on such a light weight mount.
After a couple of hours the seeing was getting soft. I folded every thing up, and jumped into the naked eye observatory, Thirty minuets in the hot tub is a perfect end to a December viewing session.