23:00 – 03:33
After a day out it is unexpectedly clear. So after being notified as such from some friends at Basingstoke Astronomical Society, I opened the dome and uncovered the 22″.
I set the 150 Esprit in the dome running on M57 again to grab some more data as the night before. I do like to have at least 4 hours on each object now.
I then started cooling down the 22″ for the specific purpose of viewing Saturn at around 2:30am.
At 2:30am I started viewing Saturn.
I needed to move the scope back away from its usual place away from the Workshop as Saturn was behind the roof. I used the 31mm Nagler to start with, Saturn was fairly small but crisp in the FoV. I then swapped to the 13mm Ethos, refocused and Saturn appeared much larger, however the detail came and went with the seeing. Saturn was pretty low at this point, only 23º above the horizon. The rings were clear and obvious, the Cassini division easily seen between the A and B rings. I could not make out any surface detail. I spent about 20mins observing with my observing chair which was very pleasant on this summers night at 14º.
I finally looked at Neptune at 3:20am. I star hoped from Omega Pisces down towards Neptune.
I could just make out Omega Pisces in the night sky due to the approaching dawn. Neptune was extremely small but an obvious planet rather than a star.
