Saturn 28th April at Opposition

[johnh]

SPX350 F36.2, PGRFlea3, Baader RGb filters, IR 742nm. Seeing fair to good

JetStream had broken finally to give calmer conditions with seeing here in Australia. Stars twinkled lightly and Saturn showed steady apparition for a few seconds intermittently. Some features visible best in the gif animation of 2 data sets, the IR showed nice banding too. As Saturn rose high the seeing got worse. Opposition gives brighter rings than normal called the Seeliger effect due to absence of dimming shadows cast against background ice particles.

RRGB1 1215hrs

RRGB3 1325hrs.

Thanks, John.

[t_ilan_s]

WOW!

The amount of details is outstanding!

[alanjgreen]

Superb!

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Stunning images. It is brilliant that you can image the hexagonal structure at the poles.

[Stargazer33]

Very nice images John.

Do you know what is causing the dark areas either side of the planets disc where it meets the rings?

[Jake Bullit]

Wowzer!

Sent from my HTC HD2

[emilf]

Wow, amazing images !

[johnh]

Thanks everyone, Bryan the dark patches seen where rings are against the back of planet are caused by sharpening to bring out low contrast detail, I really should take more care to preserve the planet disc edges. I use a lot of sharpening but excellent seeing is a good cure for to much sharpening which I wait for desperately.

John.

[Zendrix]

outstanding!

[JamesF]

Fantastic images.

James

[Space Cowboy]

As I said on another forum eye popping Hex!

[Pete Presland]

amazing images, they could have been taken from cassini there so good!

[bm1980]

Excellent work.

Regards

Ben