OR: Titan's shadow viewed with some determination 5/30/09

Because I figured it was going to be completely clouded over in
Albany on Saturday night, I e-mailed Dennis Beckley and made plans to
meet at his house at 9:00 in Benicia to try and capture Titan's
shadow transit. I've seen this rare event twice but wanted to try
for another. It was mostly socked in when I arrived at Dennis', but
we drove a few miles to Renato del Rosario's. His house sits on a
hill with a good southern horizon from his background. Renato had
his 12" Portaball already set up and Saturn was visible though the
transit hadn't begun yet. But by 10:00 or so, we were completely
clouded in at Renato's house, so Dennis and I decided to drive
further north hoping to escape to cloud cover.

We pulled off the road perhaps 10 miles from Dennis' house and found
a dark spot just off the freeway where there was a small break in
clouds in the direction of the moon and Saturn. By 10:30 we had
Dennis' 10" scope set up and were trying different eyepiece
combinations as the seeing was fairly soft. The best match seemed to
be my 8mm Ethos and 7mm Pentax XW. Although we had to be patient for
the wind to stop shaking the scope and the seeing to improve
simultaneously, we both described a spot NE of center, just below the
ring. By 11:00 low clouds were covering up Saturn and our window of
opportunity finally closed. When I arrived back at home at midnight
I confirmed the location on StarryNight Pro, so the mission was
accomplished!

--Steve

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