From: Willie Strickland <willie@igc.org>

Date: March 26, 2008 12:15:43 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] dancing with the moons...

The best eyepiece view I have had of saturn was one very nice night at the Eldorado Star Party (2005 I think) with exceptional seeing.  I used a friends Pentax 3.5mm wide angle lens in my 10" Orion dob (resulting in 343x and just under 12 arcmins field) and just couldn't take my eyes away.  I had never seen such magnification so still before or since.

I continued to observe saturn through my scope with that eyepiece for over 20 minutes, occasionally peaking through a nearby 18" dob and a nearby Nexstar (dont remember the size of the Nexstar mirror or either of the other eyepieces).  Then the seeing began to deteriorate again.

Willie

On Mar 26, 2008, at 5:37 AM, Mark Gaffney wrote:

I`ve tried a couple of times to look at Saturn through my 10 inch reflector but it was much

further in the distance than you obtained! The rings show quite clearly on the "10" as

opposed to my other "4" though.