July 2024
Featuring Saturn, the Moon and the Sun, the Dumbbell nebula, and another small nebula! 28th and 30th July - Solar system things. Saturn is now rising to a decent height before twilight. higher than it has been for a good few years, so I thought I would get some images. I was unhappy with my first attempt on the 19th of July, so here's the second, from images taken 2:57 and 3:45 on the 28th July. This is a 200% version of the original images. You can see that we are now looking at the ring system close to edge on. As Saturn moves around its nearly 30 year orbit. the plane of its ring system is always orientated in the same plane relative to the greater universe. (I'll bet this is not true - it will precess in the same way as the Earths axis of rotation or the Moons orbital plane does). It follows that the angle at which we view the rings will depend on what direction in the greater universe we are looking when we observe Saturn...