Saturn, Rhea, Dione, Tethys, Enceladus and Mimas with orbits

[Dennis]

Hello,
Here are a series of images showing Saturn and 5 brighter inner moons and how I managed to record them on 3rd May 2013.


#1 is an image from an AVI exposed for the moons and shows the rings tilted
#2 has been levelled and blends in an image of Saturn from an AVI exposed for the disc and rings
#3 shows the names of the moons
#4 shows the orbits on the moons as derived from Starry Night Pro Plus 6.
#5 shows the names and orbits on the moons.

All taken with a Tak Mewlon 180 F12, TeleVue x2.5 PowerMate and ASI120MM ccd camera. The seeing was not really up to using the x2.5 PowerMate, which shows in the soft image of Saturn, but I wanted the image scale to obtain as much separation as possible between Mimas and the outer edge of the rings of Saturn, which was approx. 6 arc secs.

Cheers

Dennis

Saturn details:
Magnitude: 0.15
Size: 43"x 17" (incl. rings)
Earth Distance: 8.8 AU
Sun Distance: 9.8 AU
Diameter: 120536.0 km

Satellites details:
Name Mag PA° Sep"
Mimas 13.0 271.9 28.9
Enceladus 11.8 81.7 34.3
Tethys 10.3 217.6 18.6
Dione 10.5 354.4 18.3
Rhea 9.8 78.3 70.2

[h0ughy]

great work Dennis

[allan gould]

Excellent images and explanations, Dennis

[Larryp]

Nice work, Dennis:thumbsup:

[iceman]

Very nice. #5 looks like it belongs up on the screens in mission control as part of Cassini :)

[batema]

Yes number 5 is a classic. Well done for thinking of this presentation. Excellent.

Mark

[asimov]

Nice work Dennis but looks like it was terrible seeing!

[Shiraz]

beaut images Dennis - really interesting presentation extracted from ordinary seeing. Regards Ray

[Dennis]

Thanks for the comments and feedback guys, it just goes to show that even a Tak Mewlon can’t beat the seeing.:)

Cheers

Dennis

[Quark]

What excellent presentation Dennis, perhaps the same thing in better seeing would look great printed out as a wall chart.

Top Stuff.
Regards
Trevor