Saturn over the last 6 years (2018-2023)

Image Title: Saturn over the last 6 years (2018-2023)

Date image was taken: August 29, 2023

Location: Wattle Flat, NSW, Australia

Image Description and Details : The excellent seeing of August 29th 2023 allowed me to produce a Saturn image of sufficient quality to add to my montage of images over the ringed planet over the last few years. This made number six (2018 to 2023)

Saturn is tilted at nearly 27 degrees to the plane of its orbit. The direction of this tilt is maintained, such that as it orbits the Sun, the appearance from Earth changes from one where the rings are fully open to where they are edge on, every 7.5 years, or 1/4 of the orbital period of the planet. They will be edge-on in 2025.

Note the brightness of the rings in the image for 2023. This is due to the Seeliger effect where the rings brighten greatly near opposition and this was captured a couple of days after opposition. The brightening is due to the absence of shadows on the ring particles and coherent back scattering.

Note how much the appearance of the planet has changed over the timeframe in terms of the colours of the various bands and the amount of atmospheric activity.

Equipment Details: OTA: C14EdgeHD

Cameras: ZWO ASI 174MM, Player One Saturn-M SQR, QHY 5III200M

Filters: Chroma RGB

Focal Length Increaser: Tele Vue 3X Barlow, Tele Vue 2X Barlow

Exposure: 13ms

Runs: 11-13 RGB runs of 90 secs per colour channel per image

Processing: Autostakkert3!, RegiStax6, WinJUPOS, Photoshop & PixInsight

Copyright: Niall MacNeill

Website or Facebook Profile: http://astrob.in/0uod56/D/