Ring-less Saturn and moons, 12 April 2025

[Tulloch]

For those of you not on Cloudy Nights, I finally got a clear morning to capture Saturn (almost) edge on. Saturn was sitting at about 15 - 20 degrees elevation, so I racked up the ADC and had a crack. Early captures were not great, but by the time dawn was breaking I was able to capture some presentable images.

Here's my best images from the morning, of most note was the complete absence of any rings, even when I ramped up the middle "level" slider in Photoshop. Colours aren't great, but the ring shadow is quite obvious.

The composite image shows a ringless Saturn and (top to bottom) Rhea, Dione, Tethys, Enceladus and Iapetus.

Images captures using a Celestron Evolution C9.25" SCT with ZWO ADC, Televue 2.5x Powermate and ASI224MC camera.

[EpickCrom]

G'day Andrew.

Outstanding images! I've always wanted to see Saturn with its rings completely edge on and invisible. Fascinating images, love the thin shadow of the invisible rings!

[Pierre_C]

Thanks for sharing. Very interesting.

[astronobob]

Very cool catch Andrew, nice looking results as well done there , ,

[Dave882]

Great work Andrew. It’s a really fascinating view indeed!!

[Tulloch]

Thanks all, it is certainly an interesting sight :)

[N1]

Andrew, great capture of an event that isn't all that frequent, and good to see that such fantastic work continues to be posted to this forum.