Observation by Andrew Ciavarella: Saturn 26/7/18

Uploaded by

Andrew Ciavarella

Observer

Andrew Ciavarella

Observed

2018 Jul 26 - 21:30

Uploaded

2018 Jul 27 - 19:48

Objects

Saturn

Equipment
  • 9mm ortho. + 1.6x barlow
  • 254mm F4.7 reflector
Location

Taunton, Somerset

Target name

Saturn

Title

Saturn 26/7/18

About this image

Seeing as I've lost Jupiter behind a cherry tree and Mars is a matter of either staying up too late or getting up too early I turned my attention to Saturn. I think I would sketch the planet more often if I could see changes taking place in the cloud systems but that's always been a big ask for me for Saturn.

Tonight I thought I would be a little more liberal with sketching what I thought I might be able to see, which in particular includes a large brighter patch at Northern temperate latitude to the east. I found discerning the belts  difficult though I was confident of a dark NEBs, and of the brightest zone north of the EZ. The Northern limb always looks very darkened to me. The planet looked to have a touch of green colouring. Seeing was not great (III at best).

The thin sliver of shadow of the planet on the rings was obvious, and there appeared to me a little of the shadow of the rings on the planet on the SW limb, as the intersection of the rings with the planet looked asymmetric with the SE limb.

Central meridian longitude of system III is 99 degrees at 22:30UT, in case that likely fanciful bright patch is real! Observed from 22:25 - 22:45 UT.

This is a pencil sketch made at the telescope, touched up afterwards and then augmented in an image editor.

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