Contains:  Solar system body or event
Saturn's rotation, Niall MacNeill

Saturn's rotation

Acquisition type: Lucky imaging

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Description

I decided to make an animation from the 7 RGB runs I made of Saturn on September 15th. Although the features are subtle if you look closely you can see the whole planet rotating before your eyes. The duration is about 30 minutes.

Unfortunately these GIF animations are never of the highest quality which makes it more difficult to spot subtle features in the planet's atmosphere.

Enceladus can be seen moving in the foreground from left to right. Since the individual images that make up the animation are integrations of 2 or 3 captures, the moon has not been too smeared out too much as if it would be by the larger number of integrations I normally make when processing Saturn.

I am also certain that I can see motion of the planet's rings. There are spokes or some such features in the B Ring which can clearly...at least to me, be seen rotating in the same direction as the spin of the planet. I can see it on both sides. Now please tell me I am not imagining this!!

These cannot be artefacts as the are moving around the rings on both sides of the planet and in the right direction.

I made the images into an MP4 Movie which is of higher quality than the GIF animation. You may be better able to see both the planets rotation and hopefully also what I have seen in the rings here.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6bzo8fn0jg0qhb0/saturn%20rotation%20high%20quality.mp4?dl=0

It is best to put the video on a loop to see the motion.

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