The seeing was a little better here earlier that night (Wed 1/12 9pm), around a 7, and I could use 250X on my 100mm ED refractor. I use a 9mm Nagler on a Televue 2.5X Barlow to get 250X, an equivalent 3.6mm, still giving a good field and adequate eye relief. Variable double star Iota Cass was a challenge triple for me at 2" and 7". It's a beaut! Bright Star Atlas says 2.5" (2000). Also Sigma Cass at 3" was a tough but beautiful split, blue with the companion a fuzzy green, nice! It's about a degree S of NGC 7789, the White Rose Cluster. I use this nifty animated website (Damian Peach's) for seeing comparisons: http://uk.geocities.com/dpeach_78/pickering.htm Jack > Howdy all; > > Just a quick report. Using the "new" 9.25 inch Celestron SCT in my > backyard observatory, I observed Saturn and Comet Machholz tonight > (Wed). > > The seeing was rated at 5/10, so the highest useful power was 200X with > a 12mm Lanthanum eyepiece. Saturn was good, but not great, at that > power and it certainly is surrounded by little satellites. I got to > thinking about the fact that a probe from the third planet is orbiting > the sixth planet-amazing. Cassini's division was easy, but there where > no markings on the ball of Saturn. Save the high power for another > night. > > Comet Machholz was nice, even in the city lights. It was easy to sweep > up in the 8X50 finder scope and with a 32mm Konig eyepiece the comet was > light green in color and displayed three layers, getting brighter toward > an almost stellar nucleus. At this low power the coma really grew in > size when averted vision was used. > > Hope that the clouds will go away for a while so we can follow the > comet; > > Steve Coe -- See message header for info on list archives or unsubscribing, and please send personal replies to the author, not the list.