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Saturn and Venus, Observing on Foothills Parkway.
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I hope to be their at about 6:00 PM.
The overlook facing Maryville but closest to the observation tower. It is one or two miles EAST of the observation tower parking lot. Map: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Foothills+Parkway+Southwest+Parking+%238,+Foothills+Pkwy,+Maryville,+TN+37803/@35.6703575,-83.9039239,230m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x885ea5eac428b7eb:0xadb3c35bea3433fd!2sFoothills+Pkwy,+Tennessee!3b1!8m2!3d35.7045455!4d-83.8146851!3m4!1s0x885ea226fba9ce7b:0x4cc9535748d34cd4!8m2!3d35.6707204!4d-83.9034891 |
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Janice and I went and got there just before sun set.
There were a couple of cars in the parking lot and I explained to the occupants that I had a telescope and as it got dark we could see something the details of which I did not want to say. One of them guessed the young moon.
I first sighted the scope on a distant column of rising steam or smoke to the south west. I am not sure what it was but we could not see the source. Perhaps they are the Soddy Daisy cooling towers. The visitors got to see the image upside down through the telescope.
By something like 6:15 or so we could see the moon. Lots of ooowws and ahhhs. One of the visitors was photographing the moon with a telephoto lens and was getting the back side light by earth light. I explained the geometry and that the pacific ocean and clouds were reflecting that light up to the moon.
Finally through some clouds we could see Venus and we all looked and then soon Saturn which only barely fit in the field of view of my lowest power eye piece. It has a claimed FOV of 70 degrees and we were running magnification of 1200/38 = 31 so the FOV would be 70/31 or 2.2 degrees.
Here I have used Cartes du Ciel to simulate the image. The red circle is, I THINK, 2 degrees. I have flipped left to right but then rotated the image by something like 90 degrees to get this. If I recall correctly, in the eye piece Venus was to the lower left and Saturn to the upper right. and we saw a moon in line with the rings. It is Titan.  Here is the same setup for Sunday night when it was behind clouds but closer.
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