Saturn is one of those magical objects for visual observing. Surrounded by a disc (or rather multiple discs) of debris, Saturn is always great fun to look at and nice to photograph.

On 19 September 2024 the seeing was reasonable. Saturn was at a distance of 1298 million kilometres (8.7AU) as a result of which its apparent diameter, including its rings, was 44.61".

An LRGB sequence of 60s each was used using the Celestron C11 XLT EdgeHD, a TeleVue 2x PowerMate and ZWO ASI174MM at gain 350 and 20ms exposure for L, 40ms for RGB. Stacking (15% of 3000 frames in L and 15% of about 1500 frames in RGB) was done in AutoStakkert in which darks of 250 frames were loaded. The deconvoluted output was RGB combined, while the luminance was added as a luminance layer. Then the merged image was 200% bicubic resized, and ran through Topaz for severe noise reduction and resized back to 100%.

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On 25 November 2023 the seeing was reasonable. Saturn was at a distance of 1457 million kilometres as a result of which its apparent diameter, including its rings, was 39.75".

An LRGB sequence of 120s each was used using the Celestron C11 XLT EdgeHD, a TeleVue 2x PowerMate and ZWO ASI174MM at gain 300 and 20ms exposure for L, 40ms for RGB. Stacking (55% of 6000 frames in L and 35% of about 3000 frames in RGB) was done in AutoStakkert in which darks of 250 frames were loaded. The deconvoluted output was RGB combined, while the luminance was added as a luminance layer. Then the merged image was 200% bicubic resized, and ran through Topaz for severe noise reduction. Despite being rather low in the sky, at an altitude of 25° (around meridian passage, but with the scopes still on the west side of the pier), the image is still quite reasonable.

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On 22 October 2023 the seeing was reasonable. Saturn was at a distance of 1376 million kilometres from Earth as a result of which its apparent diameter, including its rings, was 42.08".

An LRGB sequence of 60s each was used using the Celestron C11 XLT EdgeHD, a TeleVue 2x PowerMate and ZWO ASI174MM at gain 300 and 15ms exposure for L, 40ms for RGB. Stacking (45% of 8000 frames in L and 35% of about 3000 frames in RGB) was done in AutoStakkert in which darks of 100 frames were loaded. The deconvoluted output was RGB combined, while the luminance was added as a luminance layer. Then the merged image was 200% bicubic resized, and ran through Topaz for severe noise reduction. Despite being rather low in the sky, at an altitude of 25° (just after meridian passage, but with the scopes still on the west side of the pier), the image is still quite reasonable.

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On 22 August 2023 the seeing was very good. Saturn was at a distance of 1311 million kilometres as a result of which its apparent diameter, including its rings, was 44.16".

An LRGB sequence of 60s each was used using the Celestron C11 XLT EdgeHD, a TeleVue 2x PowerMate and ZWO ASI174MM at gain 300 and 20ms exposure for L, 40ms for RGB. Stacking (50% of 3000 frames in L and 35% of about 1500 frames in RGB) was done in AutoStakkert in which darks of 500 frames were loaded. The deconvoluted output was RGB combined, while the luminance was added as a luminance layer. Then the merged image was 200% bicubic resized, and ran through Topaz for noise reduction. Despite being rather low in the sky, at an altitude of 25°, the image is the best I made so far of this planet.

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Tonight the distance to Saturn from Earth was 1375 million kilometres as a result of which its apparent diameter, including its rings, was 42.11".

A LRGB sequence of 240s each was used using a 2x PowerMate and ZWO ASI174MM at gain 300 and 10ms exposure for L, 30ms for RGB. Stacking (35% of 23694 frames in L and 25% of about 8000 frames in RGB) was done in AutoStakkert in which a dark was supplied. The deconvoluted output was RGB combined, while the luminance was added as a luminance layer. Then the combined image was ran through Topaz for noise reduction, then 200% bicubic resized. Despite being rather low in the sky, at an altitude of 20°, the image is rather pleasing.

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This year Jupiter will be high in the sky again. In order to be prepared I decided to give Saturn, which is visible from the observatory a few hours before Jupiter, a try. First the C11 EdgeHD was collimated on Altair, then the ZWO ADC was adjusted on Saturn using ASICAP and ASI290MC. Focus was achieved by Bahtinov mask on Titan (5s exposure, gain 400).

A LRGB sequence of 120s each was started using a 2x PowerMate and ZWO ASI174MM at gain 500 and 10ms exposure for L, 50ms for RGB. Stacking (10% of respectively 11848 frames in L and 2394 frames in RGB) was done in AutoStakkert in which a dark was supplied. The deconvoluted output was first ran through Topaz for noise reduction, then RGB combined, while the luminance was added as a luminance layer. The image was merged, then 200% bicubic resized. Despite being rather low in the sky, at an altitude of 19°, the image is rather pleasing.

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If I checked out well in Stellarium, Saturn and Jupiter can be captured on one plate for three days this year (20, 21, and 22 December 2020) with the combination of C11 with ZWO ASI174MM (the image was captured without Barlow, but with ADC). Tonight (20 December) was the first chance, the two others opportunities will follow for the next two days. The circumstances were far from ideal: a lot of clouds, but fortunately also a few holes, and the planets at low altitude. Saturn was at an altitude of 11° 13′, Jupiter at 11° 04′. Their separation was roughly 9.5'.

Instead of using my usual 4 x 120s script, I set FireCapture up to make 30 second SER movies on demand. Then in between clouds (between 4:05 PM to 4:15 PM UTC) various recordings were made in LRGB, constantly manually adjusting the exposure to adjust for the thin cloud cover. In this way, several videos were recorded per filter, the majority of which had to be stopped well before the 30-seconds limit. The remaining movies, usually with no more than a few thousand frames, were subsequently stacked and the best chosen for further processing.

In the end the RGB stacks were combined into a colour plate and the L-stack used as luminance. Finally in PSP the colours were corrected and the brightness increased. The whole image was constantly processed as a whole to maintain the difference in brightness between Saturn and Jupiter. Jupiter also shows the moons Ganymede (left) and Europe. Io was in front of Jupiter at the time of the image, its shadow is just visible.

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On 22 July 2019 seeing was very reasonable and so another attempt was made to get a proper picture of Saturn. This time I used both the C11 EdgeHD and the Esprit 150ED (2x PowerMate ZWO ASI290MC), but as the latter gave a slightly more detailed image, it is this one that is shown here. For the image 8751 frames were captured in 120 seconds, 20% of which were stacked in AutoStakkert with 3x drizzle and post-processed in PSP.

The Cassini divide is clearly visible, but with some imagination the Encke divide is visible as well, but more likely this is the result of processing and related to the edge-rint effect. From outside inwards the visible rings shown here are divided in the following parts (there are other divisions at the outside).

• Ring A, containing the Encke and Keeler Gaps, ending at the Cassini division;
• The Cassini division with on its inside the Huygens Gap
• Ring B, the lighter section, starting at the inside of the Huygens Gap;
• Ring C, which is slightly darker than Ring B and contains Maxwell and Colombo Gaps (both not visible);
• Ring D, a quite dark ring inside ring C (well visible);
• (Ring F at the outside of ring A, but not visible here, the gap between A and F is called the Roche division).

Adjacent image was taken that same evening, half an hour before the one taken with the Esprit. This time using the C11 EdgeHD and ZWO ASI290MC without barlow, 60000 frames were shot, 1200 of which were stacked using AutoStakkert. Post-processing was done using PSP.

On 29 June 2019 the forecast was good again, so another attempt was made on Saturn. Imaging was done using a C11 EdgeHD without Barlow, ZWO ASI290MC and ZWO ADC. A total of 60000 frames was shot at 5ms shutter speed, 12000 of which were stacked to create this image.

On 25 June 2019 seeing was quite reasonable. After having collected the data for the animation of Jupiter I had some disc space left for a bit of data of Saturn. It can be noticed that the disc is getting flatter again, now no longer visible behind the top edge of the planet. Imaging was done using a C11 EdgeHD with 2x PowerMate Barlow, ZWO ASI290MC and ZWO ADC. A total of 10000 frames was shot at 12ms shutter speed, 1000 of which were stacked to create this image.

The adjacent image was my first attempt, taken on 21 July 2018 23:00 UTC with the C11 using a 2 x Barlow and ZWO ASI174 camera. Seeing was far from great (a warm summer night), while the altitude was just under 14 degrees, resulting in this rather blurry image.