Saturn March 28 and 29 - my best this year

[Gladiator]

Hi all,

During last weekend of March I drove on southern Tuscany to relax myself and I also brought my scope given the nice weather forecasted.

On Friday 28 a 100 km/h jetstream overhead turned a steady Saturn as smooth but on the following night it died down enough, so I had a fairly good seeing.
Moons all way around looked like small diamonds at the eyepiece! What a nice view!

No spots detected over the 2 nights at these longitudes, but I'm amazed indeed in having captured the weak Enceladus moon so close to the bright Saturn disc and, above all, the even weaker Mimas "shining" at 12.8 magnitude with a filtered exposure as short as just 60 msec!
Transparency was excellent and the sky ink black, no wind and no dew at all.

http://www.lazzarotti-hires.com/index.php

The 2 images were captured from here:
http://www.villatatti.it/home.htm
The best italian villa I know!

Thank you for your attention.

[Screwdriverone]

Hi Paolo,

That is an incredible image, its like you are in orbit on Cassini space probe, it feels so close!

Very well done, astounding images.

Is that a custom made scope that you use? It seems to have your name on it?

Fabulous!

Chris

[Gladiator]

Hi Chris,

Thank you for your warm comment!
Yes, both the telescope and the camera are made by my companies.
While working yet around cameras (the introduction in the market will happen on late 2008), the telescope I used is widely described here:

http://www.lazzarotti-optics.com/

Hope this URL is allowed by Forum rules.
No problem in case of removal by mods! ;)

[iceman]

Beautiful images, Paolo. What exposure did you use? Is the rings and globe a composite?

The crepe ring is just beautiful.

[Dennis]

Hi Paolo

Wow – a couple of superb images of Saturn and his moons. The detail in the bands on the planetary disc is astonishing and the processing looks oh so smooth.

The subtle shades and textures of the various ring components also reveal a wealth of detail that I cannot recollect seeing before. Fantastic images and great work!

I hope you managed to enjoy your stay at the Villa too – often we don’t get to see what is around in the daylight hours!

Cheers

Dennis

[programmer]

Great images.. I'm impressed by the colours and detail.

But linking to the villa in Tuscany... now that's just showing off!!

Hmmm where is my 'jealousy' emote? :P

[Garyh]

Wow...lovely shots there, the 29th is so sharp and crisp!

[Ric]

Wow, awesome images Paolo.

I also enjoyed reading about your telescopes, very fascinating.

Cheers

[Gladiator]

Hi guys,

Thank you all for your nice comments about my equipment and my images! Here my replies:

'Programmer' and Dennis - Yeah, that villa is the greatest place I know for Astronomy, relaxing and footage *all together*! You can find there the best of any! And you're in the nice Tuscany landscape, too!

Iceman - both the planet and moons come from the same FIT image. Moons were enhanced by a log stretch. Exposure time with the filtered Luminance was 60 msec.