[AZ-Observing] Titan transit visual report

Hi,
 
I viewed the Titan transit from my home in Chandler near the AZ-202 and 
Cooper.  The seeing was poor, but the transit was interesting.  I used an 8" 
SCT and 10mm Plossl (200x) and 7.5mm Lanthanum (267x) eyepieces.  The seeing 
didn't really allow 267x, so mostly observed at 200x.
 
It wasn't possible to see the start of the shadow transit with the edge of 
Saturn waving around so much, but by about 3:55 AM a dark notch was visible on 
Saturn's edge.  One memorable view was between about 4:05 and 4:10 AM when 
Titan was still visible against the dark and the shadow had clearly moved 
completely onto Saturn.  As the shadow transit progressed most of the time limb 
darkening and Saturn's wavering edge made the shadow look like a notch in 
Saturn's top.  On those rare moments of decent seeing the shadow did look like 
a small hole punched in Saturn.  Titan itself eventually vanished into the 
wavering limb for a few minutes, but Titan is surprisingly darker compared to 
Saturn.  The more Titan moved onto Saturn, the more obvious it became.  Titan 
looked brownish to me, and even with the bad seeing, Titan appeared to be in 
front of Saturn, an interesting 3D effect.  The second memorable view was 
between about 4:50 and 5:00AM when both
 the shadow and Titan were visible together.
 
Called it quits after that.  All in all it was worth the patient hour and 
fifteen minutes spent staring through the eyepiece.
 
Tom, thank you for sharing the picture and animation.
 
Clear skies,
Mark

      
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