[pylon]

Just a heads up... literally.

Right now star gazing is absolutely top notch. Around 10pm directly west, the first star you see come out is Venus, and through binoculars or a telescope, it looks like a mini half eclipsed moon. It looks best before the sun fully sets. About 10 pm, positioned just left and up from Venus (about the 10:00 position) Jupiter will come out too. If you catch it with a powerful enough scope before it is visible with the naked eye, it looks incredibly cool against a sun setting sky. It is hard to do, without a computerized GPS enabled scope, but I pulled it off with mine last night and it was amazing.

The absolute star of the show right now though is Saturn. The brightest star you see tonight, to the left of the moon at around 11pm is Saturn. If you have really powerful Binocs it is possible to see it and make out tiny rings, but you will need a tripod.

So in essence right now you have Saturn, Venus, and Jupiter, all visible to the naked eye at the same time of night, at a reasonable hour.

I had my 8" Celestron SC8 set up last night which is 2000 mm equivalent, with a 9.7mm eyepiece I had a mag factor I believe of around 350X and you could make out the main separation in the rings, Titan was plainly visible, and I could see two other moons, don't know which they were though. A couple that were passing by behind my folks house (they live on a ridge in Cranston) thought I was pulling their leg when I showed them.

Anyway, I am heading out the re again tonight with my CCD gear to try and snap some pics. I have chased good images of Saturn for a couple years, and right now, it's the best I've ever seen, and the easiest it has ever been to align to the tracking computer on my scope (that and I absolutely fluked out and calibrated with frikkin surgical precision last night somehow.) If anyone lives in the deep south and is interested in taking a peek, shoot me a PM, I'll let you know where to go.