Saturn

Saturn, with the resplendent colours of its southern hemisphere.

I had superb seeing for this session and that has resulted in a lot of detail being resolved in the planet's atmosphere.

There is a large storm cell in the NNTeZ on the p side of the Central Meridian, which could be seen in both the RGB and IR images. On its f side a series of small ovals can be observed.

This is the first image I have captured where there is clearly discernible activity in the southern hemisphere now that the ring tilt is allowing us to see that. On the northern side of what I think is the SSTeB, there is quite a dark feature on the f side of the Central Meridian nearer to the limb, again clearly discernible in RGB and IR. On the p side of this feature is a line of small ovals and festoons.

OTA: C14 EdgeHD

Camera: ZWO ASI 178MM

Mount: Paramount MX+

Barlow: Siebert UV 1.5X...giving a 7m focal length

Image scale 0.07 "/pxl

RGB captures: 90 secs per colour channel, 11 runs

Frames stacked: 87,000

Frame rate: 72 fps

Exposure 13ms

Copyright: Niall Macniell