Saturn through a camera lens

View amateur images of the most famous ringed planet.

Planet observer Julius L. Benton, Jr., instructed readers how best to take advantage of Saturn’s opposition on New Year’s Eve in the January 2004 issue of Astronomy magazine.

For inspiration or to get your fill of the Ringed Planet on cloudy nights, take a look at these views captured on film or electronic chip by amateur astronomers.

Saturn occults a star
On the morning of November 15, 2003, Saturn passed in front of an 8.8-magnitude star called SAO 78867. These images of the occultation were taken from Powder Springs, Georgia, with an 8-inch f/7 Edmund reflector, a Philips ToUcam, and a Tele Vue 2.5x Powermate lens. The images consist of 100 frames each and were processed with Registax 1 software.

-Rolando Chavez

The close-up view at right shows two trailing storms (arrowed) in one belt of Saturn’s atmosphere. The images were taken with a 14.5-inch Starmaster Newtonian f/4.3 telescope working at f/30 and a Toucam Pro webcam. Each view is a composite of 801 frames selected from a video of 1600 frames and processed in K3CCDtools and Imagesplus.

-Wes Higgins

This image of Saturn was taken with a NexStar 8i telescope on an Alt-Az mount, a ToUcam Pro webcam, a 2x Ultima Barlow lens, and an IRB filter. It is a composite of 1,200 frames stacked and processed with Registax2 and Paint Shop Pro 8.

-Joel Warren

This image of Saturn is composed of 17 images stacked and processed with Images Plus. It was taken with a Meade 10-inch SCT and a Nikon 995 digital camera.

-Rich Goodrich

This image of Saturn was captured from Northern Ireland using a Meade 8-inch LX90, a 2x Barlow, and a ToUcam Pro. The image is comprised of 630 frames aligned and stacked using Registax.

-Mark and Nigel Stronge

Saturn and its gorgeous rings were captured using a 200mm f/5 Newtonian reflector and a Toucam Pro camera. The image is a composite of 200 images processed in IRIS and Photoshop.

-Paulo Casquinha

This image of Saturn was captured from Northern Ireland using a Meade 8-inch LX90, a 2x Barlow, and a ToUcam Pro. The image is comprised of 500 frames aligned and stacked using Registax.

-Mark and Nigel Stronge

This image of Saturn is comprised of 57 stacked images. It was taken with a Nikon CP 4500 f/5.1 camera using ISO100 film exposed for 1/4 of a second. The camera was coupled afocally with an LX 200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope f/10 and a 12mm Nagler IV eyepiece.

-Bob Shabowski

This image is the result of 72 images stacked and processed with Registax and Iris. The images were captured using a Meade LX90 8-inch, 2x ApoBarlow lens, and ToucamPro camera. They were taken in Lisbon, Portugal.

-Luis Plantier