I went out April 3rd to try and catch Saturn in opposition. I saw it, I had it in my eyepiece but with the small hole in the eyepiece and the bit of haze in the atmosphere the picture I got of it is very small and not all that exciting in picture form. I went out on both the 3rd and the 2nd and viewed mainly Saturn both nights. The better night was on the 2nd which allowed me to stay up and outside for Saturn to reach Zenith to get the best view of it, by allowing me to view it with as little atmosphere in the way as possible.
It's small and blurry but it's the best image I could get for the night. For documentation purposes it's perfectly fine for me.
Through the eyepiece with my eyes it was simply breathtaking. I could see the disc of Saturn and I could see the northern side of the rings tilted towards me. I however couldn't see the Cassini Division, which is the space that separates the inner B ring from the outer A ring, probably due to a slight disturbance in atmosphere or possibly bad focusing. I could also make out the gap between the rings and Saturn itself. I couldn't make out any storm patterns on Saturn's surface, but there was absolutely no mistaking what was in my eyepiece. It was very bright in my eyepiece, which might have participated in it's difficulty in seeing it in a bit more detail. I tracked it across the sky for atleast 30 minutes before moving. If you know anything about an EQ mounted telescope you can find yourself in some weird contorted positions to get your eye to the eyepiece. I was crouched down, then I was kneeling, then I was bending over and twisting. Not the most comfortable, but it was well worth every second of it. Luckily Saturn's not going away anytime soon so I'll have more opportunities to try and capture a picture of it that is better than the one posted above. Unfortunately that's the best I could get. I spent more time viewing than trying to get a picture of it; I couldn't pry myself away from the telescope, except to let my girlfriend gaze at it's glory. I think we would both agree that even though it's tiny through my telescope it's an extremely rewarding sight that just makes you want to keep looking.
I extracted the image above from the short video below. From what I've seen it seems for planetary pictures people usually take multiple frames from a video clip and edit the frames using free image stacking programs such as Registax (http://www.astronomie.be/registax/) or Deep Sky Stacker (DSS for short) (http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html). I had no luck using either one of these programs and not quite sure how well they would have worked for the video. As you can probably tell from my description above, the video doesn't do the actual view any justice at all. I figured I'd post it anyway in case anyone is curious to see it. You can see how small of a space the camera can see through this particular eyepiece, Saturn just entered view and then exits the view in the same short clip. Best viewed at full screen.
It's small and blurry but it's the best image I could get for the night. For documentation purposes it's perfectly fine for me.Through the eyepiece with my eyes it was simply breathtaking. I could see the disc of Saturn and I could see the northern side of the rings tilted towards me. I however couldn't see the Cassini Division, which is the space that separates the inner B ring from the outer A ring, probably due to a slight disturbance in atmosphere or possibly bad focusing. I could also make out the gap between the rings and Saturn itself. I couldn't make out any storm patterns on Saturn's surface, but there was absolutely no mistaking what was in my eyepiece. It was very bright in my eyepiece, which might have participated in it's difficulty in seeing it in a bit more detail. I tracked it across the sky for atleast 30 minutes before moving. If you know anything about an EQ mounted telescope you can find yourself in some weird contorted positions to get your eye to the eyepiece. I was crouched down, then I was kneeling, then I was bending over and twisting. Not the most comfortable, but it was well worth every second of it. Luckily Saturn's not going away anytime soon so I'll have more opportunities to try and capture a picture of it that is better than the one posted above. Unfortunately that's the best I could get. I spent more time viewing than trying to get a picture of it; I couldn't pry myself away from the telescope, except to let my girlfriend gaze at it's glory. I think we would both agree that even though it's tiny through my telescope it's an extremely rewarding sight that just makes you want to keep looking.
I extracted the image above from the short video below. From what I've seen it seems for planetary pictures people usually take multiple frames from a video clip and edit the frames using free image stacking programs such as Registax (http://www.astronomie.be/registax/) or Deep Sky Stacker (DSS for short) (http://deepskystacker.free.fr/english/index.html). I had no luck using either one of these programs and not quite sure how well they would have worked for the video. As you can probably tell from my description above, the video doesn't do the actual view any justice at all. I figured I'd post it anyway in case anyone is curious to see it. You can see how small of a space the camera can see through this particular eyepiece, Saturn just entered view and then exits the view in the same short clip. Best viewed at full screen.
Saturn on 4/3/11 from Michael Rector on Vimeo.
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