Saturn

On Tuesday night the skies were clear so my wife and I got with some others from the Indiana Astronomical Society to do some observing.  I took our Meade LX80 mount and 6 inch Astro Tech refractor to give it a run.  During the winter I added a StarGPS to the LX80 to make the setup a bit easier.  I highly recommend the StarGPS system.  It eliminates many of the potential errors that can lead to poor scope alignment.  If the scope is carefully leveled and set to its home position, the GPS will enable you to get a near perfect alignment every time.

After I assembled  and leveled the LX80 I installed the Astro Tech scope and turned on the power.  In about 2 minutes the StarGPS found our location.  It loaded the correct time and location into the handset and then put the hand controller into the “Easy” align mode.  I did a two star alignment and was pleased to see a “Alignment Successful” message on the hand controller.

The first thing I did was slew to Jupiter to catch it before it dropped below the trees.  I was rewarded with a nice view of Jupiter and four moons. Jupiter’s bands were visible but the Great Red Spot was not visible.

My wife and I spent the rest of the night viewing a number of deep space objects.  One of the nicest DSOs we saw was when my wife got M81 and M82 in the eyepiece at the same time.  We also had a nice view the Sombrero Galaxy (M104).  Later in the evening I tried out Meade’s “What’s Up Tonight” feature to take  a guided tour of the nights best objects.  The hand-controller selected a few objects that were new to me;  so it was time well spent.

We finished up the evening by getting our first view of Saturn this year.  I always enjoy looking at Saturn because it has such a striking appearance.

Fred,  KC9QQ