Saturn, Jan 3

After a few months break away from imaging it's that time again... Saturn is at quadrature and it's time to sweep the spiders out of the observatory and set the alarm for 3.30am

Here's an image from this morning, this is a composite from three separate runs taken between 0410 and 0438 this morning.

Scope: www.acquerra.com.au/astro/lexx.html

capture: 3 separate runs, each run is 180 seconds each in R,G,B @ 22fps.

regards, Bird

Very impressive image Bird. Excellent detail in the banding. Well done. Great setup by the way!

Hi Bird.
It's good to see you dusting off the planet killer again.
One thing that struck me when looking at Saturn recently was
although the rings are just 10's of meters think they still reflect quite a lot of light.
Obviously the overall angle which is not
100% edge on and the sheer volume of material contribute to a greater reflective surface but it made we wonder if we could
view the ring plane dead on what would we see.

You wont have to wait too long Frank, the rings will go completely edge on later on in 2009, I cant wait to see it, I haven't seen that through a decent scope so this is one I'm looking forward to.
Nice image Bird.!

Likewise I have never seen them edge on and can't wait to be part of that 18 year clique!

Cool image Bird, some nice colouring there and the shadow effect is nicely caught.

Seanie.

Bird, that's a really beautiful sharp shot there !

You wont have to wait too long Frank, the rings will go completely edge on later on in 2009, I cant wait to see it, I haven't seen that through a decent scope so this is one I'm looking forward to.

At the risk of bursting a bubble here, won't Saturn be too close to the sun to see the rings edge on later this year? Sorry

Keith..