Titan’s Transit

A rare shadow-casting transit of Titan almost eluded this neophyte astronomer.

A transit happens when one object passes in front of another, and in this case it’s a dance between Titan and Saturn, with Titan’s orbit and inclination just right to cast a large shadow on Saturn’s cloud tops.

Closing in

Saturn orbits the Sun in about 29 1/2 years and as it does, we see the rings from different orientations. Sadly, the rings are closing up from our vantage point and in fact, they will be almost edge-on in 2025 and will appear to almost disappear. So catch ’em while you can!

The Planets Are Back!

It’s September 2022 and the planets are back! Well, at least at a reasonable hour. I posted a Jupiter image in the previous blog entry but I was up pretty late to catch that. Saturn is high in the sky at around 11:00 PM now, with Jupiter a couple of hours behind, and Mars after that. I got one of my best images yet of Saturn.

As the worlds – move?

You probably didn’t need me to tell you this – but our worlds are moving! I was working on some images of Saturn that I collected on September 19th and noticed its rings were in partial shadow, whereas the next most recent image showed no shadow at all. We know that the orbit of Saturn […]

2021 Stellafane and a little Planetary Image Processing

I first attended Stellafane in 2019 and had a fine time. Last year was canceled due to Covid, but now it’s back and I was eager to check it out for a second time. Stellafane – It’s the 85th Convention of Amateur Telescope Makers on Breezy Hill in Springfield, Vermont. So after arriving Friday night […]