May 30, 2009: Titan's shadow viewed with some determination

Steve Gottlieb

Because I figured it was going to be completely clouded over in Albany on Saturday night, I e-mailed Dennis Beckley and made plans to meet at his house at 9:00 in Benicia to try and capture Titan's shadow transit. I've seen this rare event twice but wanted to try for another. It was mostly socked in when I arrived at Dennis', but we drove a few miles to Renato del Rosario's. His house sits on a hill with a good southern horizon from his background. Renato had his 12" Portaball already set up and Saturn was visible though the transit hadn't begun yet. But by 10:00 or so, we were completely clouded in at Renato's house, so Dennis and I decided to drive further north hoping to escape to cloud cover.

We pulled off the road perhaps 10 miles from Dennis' house and found a dark spot just off the freeway where there was a small break in clouds in the direction of the moon and Saturn. By 10:30 we had Dennis' 10" scope set up and were trying different eyepiece combinations as the seeing was fairly soft. The best match seemed to be my 8mm Ethos and 7mm Pentax XW. Although we had to be patient for the wind to stop shaking the scope and the seeing to improve simultaneously, we both described a spot NE of center, just below the ring. By 11:00 low clouds were covering up Saturn and our window of opportunity finally closed. When I arrived back at home at midnight I confirmed the location on StarryNight Pro, so the mission was accomplished!