1:00 a.m. 30 October 2002 PDT (2002–10–30–0900 UT)
I went out this evening for a first look at Saturn. Initially, I meant to begin by collimating, but I thought I'd take a peek first, at 80x with the 15 mm eyepiece. What I saw wasn't encouraging; it wasn't bad, exactly, but in the small image (remember, Saturn's disc is only about 20 arcseconds across!), there was enough wavering to indicate mediocre seeing.
Indeed, that's exactly what I got. With the 6 mm Radian in, the rings showed precious little detail—even the Cassini Division wasn't distinct at all, but instead blurred in and out between dark and light grey. At a few selected moments, it wasn't easy to see it at all. A couple of hours waiting for the scope to cool down didn't help, so I gave up and packed it in.
Copyright (c) 2002 Brian Tung