Saturn
The planet Saturn is an utterly amazing sight in any telescope,
large or small. You'll never forget your first view of Saturn's rings. The 6th planet in our solar system is a
gas giant with a thick atmosphere of hydrogen, helium, and traces of water, methane and ammonia. Sources disagree
on the ring thickness (between 30 feet and 12 miles). The rings span 185,00 miles in diameter and are composed
of ice, dirt and rocks of unknown size. Most telescopes will show a clear view of the Cassini division, the
dark black 3000-mile gap between the outer "A" ring and the brighter "B" ring. The division is especially
clear on nights of good "seeing", when the stars don't twinkle. Every 15 years the planet's tilt changes our view of
the rings from face-on to edge-on. The rings will seem to disappear next in 2009.
North is up in the view above.
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Planet Details:
Type: Gas
Giant Planet
Diameter: 75,000 miles
Orbit Radius: 888 million miles
Mass: 95
x Earth
Image Details:
Date: Dec. 27, 2004
Time: 1:05 a.m. CST
Site: Harahan,
LA
Conditions: 7/10 Seeing, Full Moon
Telescope: 10" f/10 Meade LX200
Projection: TeleVue 2.5x (f/25.8)
Camera: Philips ToUcam Pro II
Filter:
Astronomik IR Blocking
Capture Speed: 10, 20, 30 fps
Frames: 621 of 3025, 1790 of 6000,
6742
of 12687
Processing: RegiStax 2, AstroArt 3.0
Dubbing: VirtualDub 1.5.10
Image Capture: Philips
VRecord
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