As Saturn moves around the Sun in its 30 year orbit, its rings maintain the same orientation with respect to the Sun. In 2018 that orientation was such that the rings were fully tilted towards the Sun and the Earth and we could see the northern hemisphere of the planet including the iconic hexagonal polar vortex. However, the southern hemisphere was completely hidden from our view by the rings. 4 years later in 2022, Saturn has moved in its orbit and by virtue of the fact the rings have maintained their same orientation in space we now see them more side on. This results in the narrowing of the ring tilt, gradually revealing the southern hemisphere of the planet. The color scheme of the southern banding including blues, purples and turquoise has become apparent and is quite magnificent. Equally, atmospheric features such as eddies, festoons and ovals can now be resolved as they are here. The rings will become edge on in 2025, before tilting the other way to more fully reveal the southern hemisphere.
The Lucky Imaging technique employed to produce this image resulted in the integration of 87,000 images to allow the Earth based amateur astronomer to largely negate the effects of the atmosphere and to resolve details such as can be seen here.
OTA: C14 Edge HD
Camera: ZWO ASI 178MM
Barlow: Siebert UV 1.5X
Filters: Chroma RGB
Frames stacked: 87,000
Frame rate: 75 frames per second
Exposure: 13ms
Captures: 11 RGB runs of 90 secs per colour channel
