Saturn is seen with its rings nearly edge-on. This picture was made from two short video clips. The best 200 frames were stacked and then processed to improve sharpness and detail. The night on which the videos were taken had only average seeing (stillness of the atmosphere), and Saturn was not very high in the sky. I think I could obtain a better result with my equipment under more ideal conditions.

Image details: Stacked from 200 video frames taken with an Orion Starshoot Solar System Imager and a 2x barlow lens with my 12-inch Meade telescope. Image processing with Registax, ImagesPlus, and Photoshop.

June 16, 2009