Well, I escaped Murphy’s law of buying a new telescope. I didn’t have to wait 5 days for the skies to clear, I got an opportunity the very next day.
I was super excited that I could get a glimpse of Saturn, but it was already too close to horizon. After a quick view of Venus (which wasn’t so spectacular as it was in pne of its phases), I skipped to Mars (extremely unfocsed red dot) and then finally to Saturn.
Armed with Google Sky maps on my Android and the leaser finder, I tracked down Saturn in less than 5 minutes. I captured this photo with my 32mm Celestron lens and my Canon IXU75 digital camera.
I wouldn’t blame you for not recognizing it – without collimating, without a tripod, without fixing the camera onto the eye-piece, without cooling down the optical tube to the surrounding temperature and in the middle of Toronto! – that’s the best I could get.
Update: Unfortunately, it was also to be my last viewing of Saturn for this season. The skies were too cloudy for next couple of weeks and by then Saturn, along with Mercury, Venus and Mars weren’t going to be visible for the next few months.
