Saturn from Murrumbateman, Jan 1

[bird]

Seeing wasn't good enough for mars, but by 3.30am it had improved for me to grab some saturn data. Still not a great night, the seeing got to about 6/10 max.

Anyway, here's my first saturn for the season... the colours don't line up properly but otherwise it's ok.

cheers, Bird

[Starkler]

Those rings are sure closing up on us. Its going to be a challenge to resolve cassini visually.

[Matty P]

Nice image Bird! Great stuff. :thumbsup:

How long is it going to be until the rings will disappear?

Matt

[Lester]

Happy new year Saturn.

Thats still very nice Bird.

[Ric]

Very nice Bird, a good opener for the season.

Cheers

[peter_4059]

Very nice Saturn for 6/10 seeing. It's interesting to see the rings becoming edge on. I'd read somewhere that they would be completely edge on in 2009.

Peter

[edwardsdj]

Saturn is looking so beautiful visually at the moment.

Your image captures the scene very well Bird :)

[Rigel003]

Beautiful image, Bird. A great starter to the season. Regarding the angle of the rings, the long term trend is that they are closing until edge-on in Sept 2009, but at the moment they are actually opening up slightly from our perspective until June. They were at a minimum of 6.6 degrees on 15 December, according to Sky and Telescope.

[bird]

Graeme, I know what you mean about the rings... It was a surprise to me at the start of last year to see that the rings started off closed and were slowly opening through the season - I guess it's because our orbit is tilted slightly to saturns.

After June the rings will start to close, and I guess they will close more quickly than they opened...

cheers, Bird

[davidpretorius]

its a starter...........look out Saturn, here comes Bird with a pier!

[ving]

impressive saturn bird :)

[RB]

Very nice start to Saturn Anthony.
Fascinating to watch the rings change, would make a wonderful animation over the years !!

[rumples riot]

Lovely image Anthony, just working through some of my data from Clayton. One night of good seeing only.

[iceman]

Nice start Anthony, it's not nice to compare it with the data you got at Lostock at IISAC2007 though :)

[bird]

mmmm. Funny you should mention that... :-)

After forgetting about that data for almost a year I was reminded of it just last week. I never did properly process it, the image on my website was done in a hurry on my laptop which is not good for processing work.

So to while away the windy/cloudy days I've been going back over the saturn data from 19th Jan 2007 at Lostock and giving it the full treatment.

Here's an interesting image - this is red channel only :-)

I'm still working on the green adn blue channels, got distracted yesterday adding multi-core support to the launcher I use for running ninox so it now runs 2 copies for this sort of work, much better on dual core machines.

cheers, Bird

[callingrohit]

great images bird....especially the latest one that you added from your earlier data....its crystal clear....

Could you please tell me what kind of barlow and EP you used to capture both the shots ? The image size is really big..... thanks for sharing...

[davidpretorius]

geez, the observatory server and code is going to rock!

[rumples riot]

Vivek, the image scale can only be produced by large mirrors. They have longer focal lengths and the capacity to resolve at high resolution.

[Garyh]

Beautiful saturn Bird!
Boy that red channel is razor sharp from Lostock!
cheers Gary

[bird]

Vivek, I used a TV 5x powermate + extension tubes so it was working at about 7x. The native fl of the scope is 1800mm so this ended up at a focal length of about 12.6m with a camera that has 7.4u pixels.

cheers, Bird

[bird]

... and here's the final colour version...

[Tamtarn]

Well, nearly 12 months in the making. It was certainly worth the wait :thumbsup:

Simply stunning Anthony !!!

[edwardsdj]

I am awed by that image Bird!

[Lester]

Wow, that last image is one to put on the wall.

Absolutely brilliant.

[John K]

That's sensational Anthony, capturing Enche's division like you has to be my ultimate goal with Saturn.

[danielsun]

Beautiful images Bird!!
The Lostock one is sharp as!!:eyepop:

[bird]

This might be the last year that's possible for a while, with the rings closing up and all... Just capturing the cassini division all the way around this year will be very tough, maybe not possible.

cheers, Bird

[jase]

Bird, I'm not much of a solar system planetary type of guy, but this is a lovely image you've composed. Great work. Please to hear you've also got your frequency vibration problems sorted on the Titan - saw your Titan user group post.

...Now I'll make a hasty retreat away into the DSO section before anyone notices.