Mars and Saturn in the Spring sky!
Monday 12/4/2010 : Went down to the society observatory in Austerfield with Sandra and there we met with Brian who had already opened up the Domes. We specifically wanted to look at the close pairing of Venus and Mercury from the 14" Meade SCT. Unfortunately, both were in semi-obscured by tree branches but we did see both! Not enough time to webcam though! So now with the onset of darkness, I stayed with the 14" SCT to webcam Mars and Saturn then maybe tour some close Doubles. The sky was very steady and the Seeing was very good. Brian took Sandra and her list of Messier objects and used the other Dome that houses the 11" Vixen. By now it was 2200 BST and Mars was inthe south-west sky in the constellation of Cancer quite close to M44. Saturn was over to the est in Virgo close to Beta Virginis. At prime focus with a 2x barlow I obtained some remarkably stead footage of Mars in 90 sec shorty-movies. Swining the bermoth 14" scope over to Saturn, I did the same but not...