27/03/08 Saturn and poor seing but ?????

[beamish]

Hi there, inspite of the poor cond.s last night decided to give the ringed planet a go with 4x Imagemate (recent irresistable purchase from S'n'S) and practice with the raw mod SPC 900.

Caught this but whilst playing with contrast etc, think I might have caught a moon !

(click to enlarge)

I've cranked it up abit more here, you can pick it out on the western limb of the rings

(click to enlarge)

I figure it has to be Prometheus but open to offers

Karlo

[themos]

That would be quite something, I am afraid I can't help you with it though!

[beamish]

Odd ! I have looked at other Avi's taken last night and it's on those too, so not an artifact.

[legion48]

What time did you image this one Beamish?

[beamish]

from what I can tell- 23:36 GMT. I had a look at SN pro but it's not very conclusive.

[saturn5]

Well captured Karlo. 8)

[barkis]

When I ran my Starry Night back to that time last night, Prometheus could most certainly be the candidate. It was very close to the image in your picture. I think I would put money on it being the one. In the tweaked image, there appears to be two spots, one a bit fainter and towards the rings edge.

Ron.

[jcm]

I did some checking although Prometheus is very near it does not cross the ring system. I will have another check. ( if it was a shadow transit it would be a black dot) - its only 0.02 arc seconds across.(Mag 15.6)

S16 on the diagram below is Prometheus

John

PS - S18 is Pan - Mag 19.4

[beamish]

Fun this in't it ??

Karlo

[jcm]

Fun this in't it ??

Karlo

I am not sure that the computer programs are all that accurate at this image scale. Prometheus is also very small.

John

[Tim]

I have some DSLR shots somewhere on some PC that show a black dot moving across the face of saturn. Do those moons orbit pretty quickly?

TJ

[beamish]

some yep.

[geoff_k]

My copy of SN Pro has Prometheus at about mag 20 and a radius of 45km. Elsewhere, the value is quoted as nearer 16. I know that magnitude values for objects seem to vary wildly depending on the source.

I don't know what scope you have but that would be pushing it in most cases given the size of the moon. However, I hope you have managed to image it. It would be quite a coup!

Did you manage to pick up other moons as well?

[beamish]

TBH Geoff, I've have resigned myself to the idea that its an abberation/artifact due to the processing due top the lack of other moons visible .

[geoff_k]

Beamish

Never mind, your Saturn image is very good anyway.

As far as the moons are concerned I have managed to image seven in one session, the faintest being Mimas. http://www.freewebs.com/geoff_k/Satmoons020406.jpg

It all depends on where they are in relation to the planet. Leaving Titan out of the equation, I think that Rhea, Dione, Tethys, Iapetus are relatively easy to image, given good conditions. Hyperion and Mimas are possible, but I'm not sure about any more.

Go out there and get an image of a few and publish it on here for our delectation.

Geoff

[beamish]

Certainly, as soon as cond.s allow !!