Derby and District Astronomical Society

Saturn in 2006

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The following sequence of images by Barry Ashforth shows the changing position of the shadow of Saturn on the rings between November 2005 and February 2006. Saturn was at opposition on the 27th January 2006.




Chris Newsome took this picture of Saturn next to the Beehive Cluster (M44) at 23:45 UT on the 25th January 2006, two days before the planet reached opposition. Saturn is the bright object to the lower right of the cluster in the 4 o'clock position. The image also captures the star BY Cancri about 5 hours after it had undergone an occultation by Saturn, visible from the UK, at around 19:00hrs on the 25th January 2006. Three of Saturn's moons are also visible very close to the planet, and these, BY Cancri and another field star are identified on the magnified insert at lower left. Chris used a Canon EOS300D camera and a Skywatcher 80T refractor. He took four 60 second frames at 1600ASA and combined them in Maxim DL. These were processed in Photoshop CS2 and using various dodging techniques, Chris processed the area around Saturn to reveal the moons. Further processing used RGB Levels, curves and GradientXTerminator.



This image by Barry Ashforth shows Saturn on the 24th January 2006 - three days before opposition.



Simon Allcock took this image of Saturn on the 21st January 2006 using a Meade LX90 telescope, a 2x Barlow Lens and a Meade LPI camera. 25 images were stacked in K3CCD and processed in Photoshop Version 7 to produce this picture.



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