On the night of August 19th I was able to captured this first light image of Saturn with my newly installed 21" Newtonian telescope.
This image, taken a few days after the opposition, shows the majestic system of rings of the giant planet imaged in very good seeing conditions from my flat terrace on the last floor of the condominium where I reside in SIngapore
The rings of Saturn are particularly striking in this image as they appear brighter than usual. This is due to a phenomenon known as the Seeliger effect, which causes the brightness of a Saturn ring system to increase in the days closed to the planet opposition because of the combination of two physical processes, the "shadow hiding" and the "coherent backscattering". As the Sun shines from exactly the same direction from which we are observing, the millions of icicle composing the rings are hiding their shadows from view, reaching 100% illumination. Furthermore, reflections off the many irregular bits of rock and dust combine to produce a more intense (coherent) light reflected back. This is similar to highway retro-reflectors shining our headlights back at us at night.
The Seeliger effect is subtle but enough to increase Saturn total apparent brightness by about half a magnitude.
In addition to the Seeliger effect the image also revealed a polar storm in progress on Saturn's surface, the "white spot" clearly visible on the top of the globe just past the meridian.
Newton Nauris 535mm f/3.8 + TV PM5x (@ f/19) - 4 x 60" sequence for each channel - Drizzle 1.5x - Player One Saturn-M-SQR (IMX533M) - Custom made horseshoe mount - Singapore
Comments