2009-02-07

While standing around and chatting, during the gaps in the cloud, I took a number of hand-held shots of the Moon with my EOS 400D and the its 200mm Tamron lens. Nothing fancy but they turned out okay. Here's an example:

The cloud got worse and by about 21:41 UT we were totally clouded out. This lasted until around 22:24 UT when it started to break up again.

By 22:25 UT some reasonable gaps had started to appear in the cloud and John turned his 'scope on Saturn. I had a look and was immediately struck by how much the rings at closed up since the last view I had almost exactly a year ago. There was a hint of mottling on the disc of the planet but it was difficult to make out much in the way of detail due to cloud coming and going.

Titan was easily visible.

While waiting for Saturn to appear from behind the clouds again I was looking in the general direction of Leo and saw a short but bright meteor head roughly west to east just below the constellation.

Cloud cleared again so back to Saturn.

John noticed what he thought was another moon or perhaps a background star near Titan. I had a look and confirmed that there was a pretty faint object in the position he'd mentioned. I made a simple sketch in my notebook with a view to checking what it was when I got home.

Checking later it would appear that the object we saw was Rhea.

John next spotted another, even fainter, object. This time around half way between Titan and Saturn's rings. Again I looked and managed to confirm the object in the position he'd been looking in. Again, I made a note on the simple sketch in my notebook so I could check what it was later.

Checking later it would appear that we'd seen either Dione or Enceladus. Starry Night suggests that Dione would have been the brighter of the two so I'm assuming that that's what we saw.

The other thing I noticed while observing Saturn, and John confirmed it, was that one side of the rings (the "right" side as seen via the view at that time in John's refractor, the opposite side to the side where Titan was) looked like they were detached from the planet's disk whereas the other side looked like they were attached. Despite the rings being very closed up now it seems that the planet's shadow on the rings was still very obvious.

Later checking confirms that this is where the shadow should have been.

Did a bit of general skyscape/landscape photography, taking in Orion (including picking out M42).

Even though the sky had cleared by now the Moon was whiting out the sky and, given that we'd seen most of what was worth seeing tonight, we decided to call and end to the session and pack up.