February 18th 2007

The weather has been really bad the past 2 months. It has been a cold and snowy winter so far, very unusual for Lubbock. Last week was the closest approach to Saturn, I was clouded out. Tonight though it was great. Seeing in the backyard here in Lubbock 101 55' 3" W 33 35'3" N was very good to excellent. I setup the Celestron SCT C8 on its CG5 goto mount at 9:00pm and left it for an hour. I then when out to dark adapt as best I could given the city light pollution. I could see 4.5 to 5.0 Mag at the zenith. It was dark enough that I did not notice that I had selected the Meade 5000 UWA 6.7mm instead of my UWA 14mm. I thought while viewing Saturn that it looked okay but was surprised it was not any steadier given the conditions. I then switched to the lanthunum 10mm in the hopes of getting better contrast, was I surprised when the image was smaller but as sharp as a tack. The Cassini ring and the planet's cloud formations were easy to see. I watched it for about 30 minutes. I checked out M67 it was a great open cluster to look at, I also looked at M44. I also looked at M105 and M96, they appeared as small smudges, but I could pick up a little of their shape with averted vision. I went inside at around 11:15pm