Compilation of images of Saturn taken between June 2017 and September 2021. This is my fifth consecutive year of planetary imaging, and in looking back through past images I noticed that the appearance of the tilt of Saturn's rings can be seen over the course of these five years. A little reading up on the topic revealed that the maximum tilt of Saturn's northern hemisphere towards the Earth occurred in 2017 which was my first year of planetary imaging. That tilt has decreased from a peak of 27 degrees in 2017 to 19 degrees in 2021 and will reach 0 degrees in 2025 when we'll see the rings edge on. From there we start to see the south side of the rings with maximum tilt of the southern hemisphere towards the Earth in 2032. Hope to still be in the planetary imaging game and maybe get a few equipment upgrades along the way...
Imaged with a C8 Evo, 2x Barlow, ZWO ADC, Baader UV-IR Cut filters, and ZWO ASI 120MC/224MC. Imaging train was configured to give me ~F/20. Image capture using Firecapture. Stacking in AutoStakkert3. Color balancing and Wavelet sharpening in Registax6. De-rotated and combined images in Winjupos.
My imaging setup evolved a bit over the years, but has been stable since 2019. I scaled the 2017 & 2018 images to the same pixel size (106 pixels) as the more recent images. I also used PlPP to normalize the histograms across images.
2017/06/19: C8/2xCelestron barlow/UVIRC filter/120MC, 0.1524 arcsec/px, 26.6 deg dec
2018/06/29: C8/2xSiebert barlow/UVIRC filter/224MC, 0.187 arcsec/px, 26 deg dec
2019/07/10: C8/2xSiebert barlow/ADC/UVIRC filter/224MC, 0.174 arcsec/px, 24.4 deg dec
2020/07/15: C8/2xSiebert barlow/ADC/UVIRC filter/224MC, 0.174 arcsec/px, 21.6 deg dec
2021/09/14: C8/2xSiebert barlow/ADC/UVIRC filter/224MC, 0.174 arcsec/px, 19.2 deg dec
Reference:
https://nakedeyeplanets.com/saturn-orbit.htmhttps://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/viewing-saturns-rings-tips-for-beginners/
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