Saturn and 9 moons - 19 Oct 2020

[Tulloch (Andrew)]

Inspired by Dennis in a previous post, I thought I'd have a crack at some of Saturn's dimmer moons, and with our moon at the start of its cycle and Phoebe now close to Saturn, it was the right time. As it turned out, capturing the moons wasn't that difficult, the real time waster was confirming their locations. SkySafari and Stellarium show Phoebe in the wrong position, WinJupos doesn't show it at all, and eventually I remembered about the NASA Planet Viewer website, giving accurate locations of the moons of the outer planets.
https://pds-rings.seti.org/tools/

I took two images, one using my normal settings (C9.25" SCT, 2.5x TV PowerMate on my Evo mount at 100 fps), the other at 1 fps but replacing the PowerMate with my Meade f/6.3 focal reducer to increase the FOV and let more light in. The first image was for Saturn and the close moons, the second was for Iapetus, Hyperion and Phoebe.

After stacking, stretching and aligning the two images I ended up with these. The first is just the planet which came out OK, the second is the cleaned up planet + moons image.

Also here are some stretched frames with the PDS data superimposed on it to show the moon locations. What started out as a bit of fun turned into a real slog, I don't think I need to do this again

Andrew

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

nice capture and detective work there andrew.

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

Andrew,
Well done mate!
Your labour of love certainly produced the results, Excellent outcome.
( I checked with CdC V4 and lo and behold it also showed Phoebe out of position!!)

[Retrograde (Pete)]

Very cool Andrew - a lovely Saturn plus a whopping 9 moons!

[Dennis]

Well done Andrew, the image of Saturn would be fantastic by itself without the icing on the cake of the 9 satellites.

I really like how you have displayed the brighter/dimmer satellites with more/less intensity.

Cheers

Dennis

[multiweb (Marc)]

Awesome shot Andrew.

[Tulloch (Andrew)]

Thanks all, I wasn't at all sure I could capture all these moons, but thanks to Dennis who showed it was possible I thought I'd have a crack!

[Quopaz (Nick)]

Great work, any chance there could be more moons there? Or would they be too faint or further out? Looks like it gets hard to work out which ones they are.

[Tulloch (Andrew)]

Thanks Nick, the PDS website will also show the smaller moons (if you ask it to, about 30 in total), but the larger ones that have names are too close to the planet and get swamped the glow.

Here's a map showing all the moons down to Pan (moon #18).

[Quopaz (Nick)]

Ah, too close, didn't consider that but yeah that would make it hard.

[P1W2 (Peter)]

Great Photo’s. PM sent.

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

Cartes du Ciel latest V4.3 beta has been updated to use the NASA satellite parameters. (Spice)
Should now show all the fainter satellites accurately.

[Ittaku (Con)]

Fantastic images. I find Saturn's moons wrong in skyportal too. I use an app called "Sun, Moon, and Planets" JUST for Saturn's moons. Alas it only shows 8 of them though.

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

Most programs and apps use the same Astronomical Almanac Suppliment data, hence the problem.

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

A screen shot from the latest Cartes du Ciel update. (V4 beta 4128)
This now shows accurately all (well almost!) the planetary satellites visible to amateurs.

[Tulloch (Andrew)]

Thanks for that Ken, I'll look it up

Andrew