by Jane Houston Jones
My first problem is that I've never sketched a decent Saturn before. My rings always look cruddy, and I've never really seen much detail through my reflectors. What a difference an AP180EDT makes! :-) I hunted for a template to turn my first scribbles into decent drawings - drawings where I could identify the features I was seeing. The templates I liked the best (because they are just a bunch of ellipses and nothing formal) are here. They are intended to be used with painting or graphics software, but I just used their outline under a fresh piece of sketching paper.
http://www.brayebrookobservatory.org/BrayObsWebSite/HOMEPAGE/LogBook_1.html
I studied some Saturn sketcher web pages - many thanks to Eric Jamison for his consistently great sketches, nomenclature and advice. I guessed the ring tilt was 25 degrees but it turned out to be 26 degrees, so I used the 26 degree templates to get started. My first sketches were made in a small 4 x 6 sketch pad, with arrows, question marks and other sketcher-shorthand. I even sketched the location of the moons and checked them against Akkana Peck's SatMoons 0.7 on my handy Palm Vx one night.
Some of the features I expected to see. I could make out the Cassini Division all the way around the planet. The planet globe showed through the C-Ring. The Encke Division was prominent in the A-Ring. The planet itself was bathed in subtle neutral shades of beige, brown and in-between. I didn't see any other colors. The south polar cap was just a tiny bit more darker tan than the south polar region, for example. But to me the color of the rings was amazing. Three shades of grey, from white-grey in the B-Ring, medium grey in the A-Ring and dark grey for the C-Ring -- except where the globe of Saturn shone through -- that area was a gauzy pearlescent shade of ghostly white. I easily identified Dione, Tethys, Rhea, Titan, Mimas, Enceladus and Hyperion on the 5th, the second observing night, and I forgot to even lookat the moons on the 1st, I was so excited with the view. Titan had a reddish tinge.
What totally blew me away was seeing spokes! I think they were visible halfway out of the C-Ring, and they continued outward toward and into the B-Ring where they were quite prominent. Mojo saw them too in the exact location before I mentioned where I had seen them so it wasn't my imagination! On October 1, we saw three long spokes in the Eastern or preceding side of the rings. On the 5th we saw a different spoke pattern on the Western or following side of the planet. On the second night, I also saw some ringlets - semicircles in the B-Ring on the preceding ansae. I also saw some other features that look like bunched together shorter spokes next to the ringlets in the B-Ring on the 5th. I'm not what sure to call these features.
We were using our Zeiss/Baader binoviewer/Barcon barlow with a pair of 16mm Zeiss Abbe Orthoscopics for 303x and a single eyepiece view through a 6mm Televue Radian for 270x without the binoview on the first October 1 morning. On the second morning the seeing was even better so we pumped up the power with a pair of 10mm ZAOs for 480x through the binoviewer/barcon combo, and 400x using a single 4mm Televue Radian. I have never had a telescope that could handle this power before. Needless to say, the view just knocked our socks off.
I saw the faint equatorial band on the 5th but not on the 1st. I saw a division on the north side of the South Equatorial Band on the 5th, but on the prior observing night it looked more subtle. On the 5th it looked distinctively notch-like, ragged-like. I have alot to learn about Saturn features, but I was pretty darn excited to have such amazing views when I was prepared to sketch. Hope you enjoy the sketches. They won't match the eyepiece views we had, but it's all I can offer.
My two Saturn sketches are in the planet section of my sketches page:
http://www.whiteoaks.com/sketches/