With all the fuss over Mars this year, many people have overlooked the fact that 06' will be a nice year for those other planetary goodies - Saturn and Jupiter. Both are nice targets for even a small refractor. I still remember my first view of Saturn. It was with an old Jason 60mm refractor on an awful mount, but it still earned a "Wow!" from me. I have seen the same response from other youngsters over the years when sharing a telescope with them. I have even had a few refuse to believe the Saturn they were seeing in the eyepiece was real, even to the point of a walking around to the front of the telescope to see if I had stuck a picture of Saturn on the end of my scope. Given that, I can only imagine what Galileo must have thought when he saw this same sight hundreds of years ago through his telescope, but I'm willing to bet it also earned a "Wow!" from him.
