Saturn and 9 “easy” satellites, Brisbane 29th April 2014

[Dennis]

Patiently waiting for bands of thin, high cloud to pass through, I managed to record a series of images of Saturn’s 9 major satellites last night, 29th April 2014, from our back yard in Brisbane using the C9.25, to see what the results would look like with no diffraction spikes from 2ndary mirror spider vanes.

I used a Celestron C9.25 SCT with a Takahashi x1.6 Extender giving an effective focal length of 3760mm at F16. Using a Canon 5D Mk III I took a 30 sec, 15 sec and 1 sec exposure at ISO6400 to record the 9 “easy” satellites of Saturn.

I then fitted a ZWO ASI120CM CCD Camera and recorded an AVI of Saturn with the exposure set to record the planetary disc.

After blending all these images in CS6, I produced a composite showing Saturn with the major 9 satellites and several field stars. The brightness relationship between the satellites has been subjected to a non-linear enhancement in order to display them in a single composite frame, as has the fainter stars.

The seeing was quite poor for the ASI120CM AVI, so the output was quite noisy.

Cheers

Dennis

Saturn:
Magnitude: 0.11, Size: 43"x 17"
Earth Distance: 8.9 AU
Diameter: 120536.0 km

Satellites:
Name Mag PA° Sep"
Mimas 13.0 272.9 28.7
Enceladus 11.8 241.9 23.5
Tethys 10.3 268.0 44.9
Dione 10.5 286.8 48.3
Rhea 9.8 27.0 32.8
Titan 8.5 288.2 152.5
Hyperion 14.4 120.5 144.2
Iapetus 11.2 307.7 316.2
Phoebe 16.6 121.4 352.6

[Derek Klepp]

I hope you have clear skies when Saturn and the Moon come together.These posts would make great High school science lessons.
Cheers Derek

[Dennis]

Thanks for your comments Derek, and thanks for the reminder of the upcoming Moon/Saturn occultation.

According to Starry Night 6 Pro Plus, this is how it looks from Brisbane on 14th May at approx. 9:00pm.

Cheers

Dennis

[allan gould]

Very nice capture Dennis. Continually impressed by your ability to do the exceptional.
Allan

[Dennis]

Originally Posted by allan gould

Very nice capture Dennis. Continually impressed by your ability to do the exceptional.
Allan

Thanks Allan. You might be surprised to hear that you have a historical association with this capture…arising from your posts with the ASI120MM CCD camera.

I was so blown away with the image quality of your lunar and planetary posts that it awoke me from my L&P slumber, as none of my modern laptops had a Firewire port and I didn’t see any value in forking out for replica USB versions of my existing IS cameras.

Then you posted your results with the ZWO cameras and I was hooked…again!

Cheers

Dennis

[allan gould]

Sorry, but you quickly went to the head of the class.
I'm impressed that IIS is a forum that continually adds to the general knowledge and information base which we all enjoy and some of the heads ups are very informative.
Regards, Allan

[h0ughy (David)]

Originally Posted by allan gould

Very nice capture Dennis. Continually impressed by your ability to do the exceptional.
Allan

+1

[DavidTrap (David)]

Very impressive Dennis,

I had my c-11 outside the other night and had a quick look at Saturn. I saw the "cluster" around it, but didn't realise the moons were "scattered" around the planet, rather than being in an orbital plane. Your image has been enlightening!

Ta
DT