Sci-Notes

Saturn… there is something unique about this planet, even a little scary. It just looks so serious, so mysterious, so huge, with its rings. Since I was a kid, it has captured my attention more than any other planet. I couldn’t wait to try to see it through my telescope.

Finding it proved to be much harder than Jupiter (and obviously the Moon). Visibility in Paris doesn’t help, nor does my myopia, so I seemed to be losing it all the time! At naked eye it was quite visible (as the photo below shows) but through the telescope it took quite some work.

After spotting it with the naked eye and an hour of trying to find it somewhat randomly (big mistake), I decided to approach it more systematically by adjusting the finder more carefully and taking advantage of its relative alignment with the Moon. At around 2:30 AM, I found it! I couldn’t believe it. When I saw the smudge, there was no doubt it was different from all the other zillions of stars I had aimed at before.

At this point, I was so tired that I didn’t bother switching to a smaller eyepiece. Another time. Before going to bed I did manage to capture one photo, but I was using an older phone and since I don’t have a proper astrophotography setur, it doesn’t quite do justice to what I saw:

And zoomed in:

When I showed it to my partner, his reaction was: “Wow, it looks like a lemon!” Indeed, it does…

Viewed through a PowerSeeker 114EQ, 20 mm eyepiece and photo with Iphone 13.