Astronomy Adventure – Great Seeing and Poor Picture of Saturn

Last night was one of the best “seeing” nights we’ve had around here in a long time. I live just within the limits of a city of around 150,000 and the light pollution is pretty bad. In addition, the humidity here in the Northeast and my proximity to Long Island Sound also contributes to some poor seeing. But last night was absolutely crystal clear – so clear you could actually see the contours of the Milky Way, which is a real rarity around here. My lovely wife was kind enough to indulge me and get me a new 6.3mm lens and, combining that with the 3x Barlow, I was able to get a magnification of around 240x. I could clearly see the Cassini division in Saturn’s rings and finally saw a little detail on Mars. I was also able to get great views of the many open clusters around Sagittarius, Scutum, and Serpens, in addition to a decent view of the Lagoon and Swan nebulas. Sadly, I just didn’t have the energy to get the camera set up and get some photos. But here is a photo of Saturn that a took a few days before at 240x when the conditions were actually pretty lousy: