The sky looked pretty miserable early last Saturday evening. I could barely see the setting Moon through the haze. Somewhat dejectedly, I watched a surprisingly enjoyable time loop movie called 12:01 on the tube. Afterwards, I attended the second screening of No Country For Old Men. Upon leaving the theater, I immediately noticed Sirius and the stars of Orion shining brightly so I decided to drive up to the ASH Naylor Observatory.

Conditions were far from perfect but the seeing was extremely good at times. (It was a balmy 33 degrees Fahrenheit in the French Dome, which was fortunate, since I didn't have my full complement of winter clothing with me.) I was able to observe Mars to good effect with the 17" f/15 classical Cassegrain at magnifications as high as 404x. Unfortunately, by the time I started, it was a bit too late for me to see Solis Lacus, the Eye of Mars. I can still vividly recall how great that feature looked at high magnification through a friend's 14.5" Starmaster Sky Tracker Dob one night near opposition in 2003. The same major features were present as during my last session on January 3: the North Polar Cap, Mare Sirenum, Mare Cimmerium, and Mare Tyrrhenum as well as hints of Mare Boreum and Utopia. I used magnifications of 162, 202, 249, 259, 324, 381, and 404x with the 17" working at full aperture. At times, I employed an Orion variable polarizing filter, an Orion SkyGlow filter, a Vernonscope CC30M (magenta) filter, and Wratten #21 (orange) and #80A (light blue) color filters. Stacking the #80A and the Orion SkyGlow filters produced some interesting results.

I arrived at the observatory much too late to see 8P/Tuttle and I couldn't make out the expansive coma of 17P/Holmes with the high clouds that were present from time to time.

The E and F stars in the Trapezium were rock steady when I trained the scope on M42 so I attempted to split Sirius. Even though I stopped down the scope to an unobstructed 6" f/42 aperture, I was unsuccessful in detecting the eighth magnitude Sirius B.

With the seeing being so exceptional, I had some fantastic views of Saturn at 259, 381, and 404x. Titan was distinctly visible as an orange-hued disk to the southwest of the planet at 404x. (Saturn is currently about 8.5 astronomical units distant so Titan is a bit more than 0.8 arcseconds in diameter.) Dione was positioned to the east. Several cloud bands were present in Saturn's southern hemisphere. The Cassini Division was noted, as was just how shallow the ring tilt angle is becoming. By September of next year, the rings will be edge-on as seen from Earth.

I also observed a number of DSOs throughout the night and had my first views of M3, M65, M66, and M104 of the new year.

So it turned out that I had a rather unexpected but enjoyable late night observing session. Seeing Titan as a clearly defined disk was particularly memorable.

Dave Mitsky

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De gustibus non est disputandum.
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