Saturn Nearing Opposition

Saturn from our Backyard
19th  April 2013

Saturn reaches superior opposition on the 28th April. Superior opposition occurs when the Sun, Earth and a planet outside the Earth's orbit line up. At opposition the planet is usually at its brightest.

Sadly for this opposition, Saturn is very low in the sky and is therefore seen through more of the Earth's atmosphere. This causes the image of Saturn in a telescope to be blurred as thermal currents in the air interfere with the photons of light.

As our backyard is enclosed by buildings, I have to contend with the heat haze radiating from rooves and chimneys!

In order to capture the best image possible I used my QHY5v planetary camera and my 127mm Meade Apo -refractor operating with a 2.5x Barlow at F19.

 The planetary camera takes a AVI video clip which can be manipulated in the freeware programme AutoStakkert.  The software analyses the data in the video clip, selects the best images, stacks the data, improves the signal to noise ratio and creates a single sharpened image. The above image was finally sharpened and calibrated using Adobe Photoshop.

Saturn has at least sixty two moons, with fifty three of them named.  Through the telescope eyepiece I managed to spot four of the bigger moons including its largest, Titan.

Saturn, although relatively close as a member of our Solar System, is in fact a very long way away from us - approximately 1.2 billion kilometers.  The photons of light I collected with my telescope originally set off from the Sun, were reflected by Saturn's hydrogen and helium clouds and then returned to Earth through the vacuum of space.  The round trip undertaken by these photons, Sun-to-Saturn-to-Earth, took just over two hours!

If you would like to have a look at Saturn it will be close to the Moon on the 26th April. With the unaided eye Saturn looks like a fairly bright yellow star. You should be able to spot its moon Titan in 10x50 binoculars but to see its beautiful rings you will need a telescope providing at least 40x magnification.

With a bit of help from Photoshop I managed to pull two of Saturn's largest moons out from the dark vacuum of space!

Titan, Saturn's largest satellite, was discovered in March 1655 by Christiaan Huygens.

Rhea, Saturn's second largest satellite, was discovered in December 1672 by Giovanni Cassini.

Saturn at opposition with three moons
taken through my Meade Refractor

I took this image two weeks later at opposition. Notice  how the rings have brightened due to the 'Seeliger Effect'.