Saturn - The rings are closing-up!

Monday 20th April: a good clear night and I decided that another shot a Saturn was required. I got to the Observatory at 9:30pm but Brian had three groups of students to show the night sky to. So I made best use of my time by brushing up on my Constellation/Star awareness. During this time, I saw two bright fireballs estimated at visual magnitude -6 and -4 and both moving from east to west through the Constellation of Ursa Major. At 11:30pm BST the sky was very good and I got some cracking webcam footage of the planet. After gathering several videos, Brian said we should process one there and then. This we did and he educated me in some finer points of using Registax. To finish the session we looked at one of the showpiece Binary Stars in the sky; Porrima, otherwise known as Gamma Virginis. With a 2x barlow in the 14 inch Meade, we racked up the magnification with a 12.5 mm lens giving a total magnification of x572. Using the electric focuser, I managed to get the Double as pin-sharp as possible and to my eyes two sets of concentric rings and two set of diffraction spikes, slightly offset in a N-E direction, indicated to me that we were looking at one of the toughest of visual binary stars!

Friday 17th April: I went up to the Society Observatory at Austerfield. The usual suspects were there adding to the joviality of the night! I planned on imaging Saturn using the 14 inch Meade and my Phillips Toucam. The Seeing was reasonable with some occasional high thin cloud. It took some time to get the planet on the screen of the laptop but eventually I succeeded. The result can be seen above. At 1am, Brian and I decided to close for the night as the cloud base was rolling in.


Thursday 2nd April: Went up to the Society Observatory at the Field Study Center to image and observe Saturn. The sky was crystal-clear, transparency was exceptional for this area. Stars to visual mag +6 could be seen when one was suitably dark-adapted. Brian had opened up the dome with the 14" SCT, He was going to do some Deep Sky imaging later when it had got darker but for now the scope was mine. The planet shone as a bright star, just below the constellation of Leo, clearly the most obvious star in the sky! The rings, seen from our perspective here on Earth, are closing. Later this year they will be edge-on and maybe only a thin dark line across the planet's equator will be seen. The image to the right (the result of many suitable frames from 90 seconds of webcam footage) clearly shows this phenomina in action. Compare this 2009 image to the February 2008 below, one can easily see the difference!


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