I Should Learn to Sketch

Another night sitting for 30-40 minutes watching Saturn. The moons have moved around a bit, and this time I could see both Tethys (mag 10.9) and Dione (mag 11.1) as well as Titan (mag 9.1) and Rhea (mag 10.3). Seeing was as bad as usual .

I mostly used my 6 mm Televue Radian eyepiece, but tried switching to my 18 mm Radian with the 5X Powermate to give an effective 3.8 mm f/l and I tried my 4mm Televue Plossl. Contrast is definitely better in the Radian and the 6 mm seemed to be the sweet spot. The other two choices didn’t improve contrast and didn’t have the sense of a sharp focus with the seeing conditions. Titan and Rhea were easy to spot with any of those eyepieces and I spent a while just looking to see if I could pick out anything else before checking with Sky Safari to see where the other moons were supposed to be. I kept getting little glimpses of another moon at the 9 o’clock position relative to the rings (as seen in the eyepiece; this is, of course, rotated 180° from what you would see naked eye if you had such sharp eyes!). Eventually, I figured out where to focus my gaze so the Tethys was visible via averted vision consistently; at that point, I started seeing a second moon pop in and out of focus just above Tethys. Yep, Sky Safari confirmed it was Dione. Mimas and Enceladus were just too faint. Even knowing where they were supposed to be I couldn’t pick them out. Of course, given that with the poor seeing Saturn looked like I was looking at a coin at the bottom of a swimming pool (okay, that’s a bit exaggerated), it’s not surprising.

But I kept thinking, I should learn to sketch at the eyepiece. I doubt I’ll ever get good images of the planets from my back alley here, but every now and then, the seeing snaps things into good focus and I get that split second of really nice views that I could (maybe) learn to sketch.