by Douglas Hudgins
I was able to observe the Saturn/Titan/M1 trio last night around 9-10 pm from my back yard in Tracy using my 7" Meade Mak and a 32mm Meade SWA ep (83x). Using an OIII filter to attenuate Saturn's overwhelming brightness, I was able to see a faint fuzzy patch lying beyond Titan at about 1.5x the Saturn-Titan separation. The relative position of this fuzzy patch did not change with the position of Saturn in the field, so I do not believe it was a reflection. The patch was larger than Saturn, but I do not believe that under such adverse conditions I was seeing the full extent of the nebula.
Isn't it just like a planet to get in the way and wreck a perfectly good deep sky object?