Saturn was truly awesome tonight. It's at opposition, aproximately 775 million miles away I think. I could see lots of color, S. Equatorial cloud belt, clear differentiation between A,B, and C rings, Cassini Division, S. polar region was shaded.
The seeing seemed fairly good so I cranked up the power to 445x. This eyepiece is a simple Plossl but the view was quite good.
I decided to image it with the LPI and a barlow. This was enough to bring out some seeing problems, as the rings were a bit wavy appearing. I took some images anyway, I'll check later to see if I can get anything worthwhile out of them.
When I was a kid I read some Isaac Asimov books about Lucky Starr". I specifically recall Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn. Maybe I'll see if I can dig that book up again.
By the way Saturn is very close to the Beehive tonight.
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