It was getting late in the evening, almost 1:00 a.m., in my backyard on June 6th and I was ready to call it a night. But Saturn was peeking out from behind some houses, and I thought, “I already have all my filters set out, why not try them?”.

As I mentioned in the previous log about Jupiter, the seeing conditions sucked, with lots of haze in the sky. Jupiter looked like it was underwater at times. Anyway, it was what it was.

The Hyperion 36mm 2″ lens showed Saturn nice and bright, but no real division other than the main rings around the planet. The 25mm super Plossl showed things clear and bright, but as with the observing of Jupiter, a 15mm Plossl was too strong and anything with my Powermate giving me virtual 12.5 or 7.5 was way too strong. Again, my 17.3mm Delos was the Goldilocks of the night, with power just right. FYI, I was still aligned from earlier on Regulus, Antares and Denebola.

I knew my Ultrablock and OIII would do nothing so didn’t bother. The Moon and Sky Glow filter was too dim, and I couldn’t find a good setting for the variable polarizing for this one (but I was tired, so maybe not a fair test). I couldn’t see what I did with my Lunar and Planetary Filter, found it afterwards when I was cleaning up. Which means mostly I just did colours:

• 08 Light yellow — Too pale;
• 11 Yellow-Green — Pale, but okay;
• 12 Yellow — Dim and pale;
• 15 Amber — Corona around the planet;
• 21 Orange — Another corona;
• 23A Light red — Dark with a corona;
• 25 Red — Just dark;
• 29 Dark red — Too dark;
• 38A Dark blue — Too faint;
• 47 Violet — Too dark;
• 56 Light green — Light green, not bad otherwise;
• 58A Green — Too faint;
• 80A Blue — Too faint;
• 82A Light blue — Too dimmed.

What did surprise me though was that the V-Block brought it in nice and crisp.

Overall, I would say the V-Block or #11 vs. #56 were the best for me. But I still want to try the Lunar and Planetary filter by itself. Not a complete test, but it was easier than I thought and faster.