SATURN
Updated: Jun 5, 2023
Saturn, is the first planet we visited for Galactic hunter, and it is about 746 million miles away from Earth. Planets are visible from anywhere in the world, so if you live in the center of a big city, like us, you can still see them easily, as they shine brighter than stars.
The shape of the rings are sculpted by 2 of the Planet’s moons. Promotheus: one of those moons, is only 53 miles / 86 km across, but shapes one of the rings through repeated gravitational nudges, and sometimes even enters the ring itself!
Even though our image is not a good planetary photograph, you can still see some details and especially the impressive Cassini division in the rings! Unfortunately, we can not see the storms on each pole, but maybe next time, with hopefully a better planetary equipment!
GEAR USED:
Camera: Canon t3i
Telescope: 8" Astrograph f/3.9
Mount: EQ-G motorized Mount
Processing: Pixelmator
Single Shot & Processing of Saturn
Processing Deep Sky Objects and processing planets are two completely different things.
Here is a comment response from Matthew Davenpory (from our old blog pages) who explains perfectly why our images of galaxies, nebulae, and clusters are much more crisp and beautiful than our images of planets.
Galactic Hunter Episode #3 - Discovering Saturn
Saturn was the very first planet to win a vote for a full episode of Galactic Hunter!
Discover how we captured this planet, and see the reaction of a 5 year old girl peeking through a telescope for the first time.
Final Thoughts
Saturn, and the planets in general, are a real challenge to photograph. We knew we did not have the necessary tools to process a video into an image, so we focussed of doing visual this time! If you are really good at photographing Deep Sky Objects, and are looking for a challenge, Saturn is one of the best planets to photograph!
Mackie trying to be tall enough to look through the telescope during the filming of the Episode.
Clear Skies,
Galactic Hunter
