I'm surprised that no one has posted observations of Cassini. So, although I'm a lurker 99.9% of the time, I feel compelled to share my observation. Conditions were fair last night, but still worth going to bed early (21:15 EDT) and waking up in the middle of the night (23:45 EDT) to go to the astronomy club's observatory (Wagman Observatory) for some observing. My target was none other than the Cassini spacecraft, bound for Saturn after completing a gravity assisted fly-by of the Earth just hours earlier. With calculations from JPL, I headed out. When I arrived at the Observatory, I debated about opening the 20-inch reflector; some thin haze was covering Aquarius. After a few minutes though, the clouds were moving off, so I was GO. 0:20 EDT, 1998 August 18 (4:20 UT Aug 18). I set up the scope and star hopped to the predicted position. Within a minute, I had the Cassini spacecraft in sight! It was faint (12th magnitude?), but it's motion was apparent within 10 seconds with only 100 power. I watched it off and on for another hour as it drifted through Aquarius. By the time it passed psi2 Aquarii at 1:30 EDT (5:30 UT Aug 18), it's motion was much slower and trickier to detect at 200 power. Naturally, the brightness had dropped as well but was still reasonable (at least for a 20-inch scope). Cassini was then more than 72,000 miles away: more than 3 times farther than a geosynchronous satellite! Needless to say, I was quite excited and had a hard time getting back to sleep. God speed Cassini. Have a safe journey to Saturn. John Holtz JWHoltz@aol.com Pittsburgh Pennsylvania 40d 37m 33.6s N 79d 48m 45.3s W 405m elevation