APOD: Saturn: 1993 - 2022 (2022 Aug 19)

[APOD Robot]

Saturn: 1993 - 2022

Explanation: Saturn is the most distant planet of the Solar System easily visible to the unaided eye. With this extraordinary, long-term astro-imaging project begun in 1993, you can follow the ringed gas giant for one Saturn year as it wanders once around the ecliptic plane, finishing a single orbit around the Sun by 2022. Constructed from individual images made over 29 Earth years, the split panorama is centered along the ecliptic and crossed by the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Saturn's position in 1993 is at the right side, upper panel in the constellation Capricornus and progresses toward the left. It returns to the spot in Capricornus at left in the lower panel in 2022. The consistent imaging shows Saturn appears slightly brighter during the years 2000-2005 and 2015-2019, periods when its beautiful rings were tilted more face-on to planet Earth.

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[Holger Nielsen]

Much attention to details has been put into this excellent picture. Note that the star labels are written with colors simulating the stars'.

[orin stepanek]

I know you can see it but I would lose it in the sea of background
stars!

Beautiful photo, just beautiful!

[Aries]

Wouldn't Jupiter have crossed paths during the conjunction?

[rstevenson]

I’m wondering why there’s just one image of Saturn labeled 2003-4, near the left of the top pic. (See attached screen grab, which is now a kinder, gentler file size.) Maybe that’s where it does its little back and forth jig in its orbit as viewed from Earth?

Rob

[Rauf]

Wouldn't Jupiter have crossed paths during the conjunction?

No planet can be seen. I wonder if they were digitally removed? I don't know though.

[Chris Peterson]

I’m wondering why there’s just one image of Saturn labeled 2003-4, near the left of the top pic. (See attached screen grab, which is now a kinder, gentler file size.) Maybe that’s where it does its little back and forth jig in its orbit as viewed from Earth?

It does that every year.

[MarkBour]

Wouldn't Jupiter have crossed paths during the conjunction?

No planet can be seen. I wonder if they were digitally removed? I don't know though.

During the conjunction of December 2020, Jupiter and Saturn were about 20 diameters of Jupiter apart in apparent position. While this was close, and for some telescopes, you could get them both in the same frame, if the image was taken in that month, I guess our APOD creator did not try to get an image of Jupiter in with the image of Saturn that they used.

I’m wondering why there’s just one image of Saturn labeled 2003-4, near the left of the top pic. (See attached screen grab, which is now a kinder, gentler file size.) Maybe that’s where it does its little back and forth jig in its orbit as viewed from Earth?

Rob
Screen Shot 2022-08-19 at 1.17.55 PM.jpg

A great question to ask the photographer. Maybe they got the image shown very near January 1 of 2004. But the retrograde motion of Saturn is something that happens every year, and lasts for about 4 months. So, I don't think that's the explanation. I don't think the photographer got Saturn at the same date each year, and probably not even close to the same date. Actually, I don't think, from a given place on the Earth, that you can capture Saturn near the same date year after year. (?)

[rstevenson]

I’m wondering why there’s just one image of Saturn labeled 2003-4, near the left of the top pic. (See attached screen grab, which is now a kinder, gentler file size.) Maybe that’s where it does its little back and forth jig in its orbit as viewed from Earth?

Rob
Screen Shot 2022-08-19 at 1.17.55 PM.jpg

A great question to ask the photographer. Maybe they got the image shown very near January 1 of 2004. But the retrograde motion of Saturn is something that happens every year, and lasts for about 4 months. So, I don't think that's the explanation. I don't think the photographer got Saturn at the same date each year, and probably not even close to the same date. Actually, I don't think, from a given place on the Earth, that you can capture Saturn near the same date year after year. (?)

Thanks Mark. I assumed, because I didn’t know better, that the Saturn images were taken as close to one year apart as possible. No doubt there’s software that can help with planning (or explaining) this sort of thing.

Rob

[MarkBour]

Thanks Mark. I assumed, because I didn’t know better, that the Saturn images were taken as close to one year apart as possible. No doubt there’s software that can help with planning (or explaining) this sort of thing.

Rob

Maybe some that's especially good for it. I certainly like good old Stellarium. Their online version at:
https://stellarium-web.org/
is super-easy to use.

I did try setting it to August 19, and Saturn was nicely visible this evening.

As I changed the year counter backwards, by one-year increments, at first it looked like Saturn would easily be captured every year on August 19 from my porch. However, as I got back past about 2013, I had to catch him earlier and earlier in the evening, and around 2010, it became impossible. He was too close to the Sun from Earth's sky on that date. I couldn't see him looking like he'd be able to be caught in the dark again on August 19 until about 2005 or so and then in the morning, but then was easily available for a number of years going further back. So, that's what happens on August 19. After looking at this a while, I think that when it happens, it doesn't matter where on the Earth you are, it's just Saturn in conjunction with Sol, from anywhere on Earth.

I'm pretty sure that if you picked another date, you'd have the same thing happen once in the 30-year cycle, it would just be different years for different dates on Earth's calendar. I wonder, then, how much you'd have to adjust. Maybe if you take the picture every year + about 12 days, you'll have consistent results. So, we could take a shot tonight, then on August 31, 2023, then September 12, 2024, etc. If you go for this approach, of course, in 30 years you'll only get 29 images.

[rstevenson]

... Maybe if you take the picture every year + about 12 days, you'll have consistent results. So, we could take a shot tonight, then on August 31, 2023, then September 12, 2024, etc. If you go for this approach, of course, in 30 years you'll only get 29 images.

And there are just 29 images in this APOD. I must learn more about Stellarium. I tried a decade ago but it was miserably slow on my hardware at the time. I have an M1 iMac now, so it should be much better.

Rob

[johnnydeep]

... Maybe if you take the picture every year + about 12 days, you'll have consistent results. So, we could take a shot tonight, then on August 31, 2023, then September 12, 2024, etc. If you go for this approach, of course, in 30 years you'll only get 29 images.

And there are just 29 images in this APOD. I must learn more about Stellarium. I tried a decade ago but it was miserably slow on my hardware at the time. I have an M1 iMac now, so it should be much better.

Rob

The online version of Stellarium seems to run fine from my 6 year old 2 core Dell laptop with integrated graphics. But I suppose it might be more limited compared to the locally installed version.

[canopia]

Hello,

I labeled the Saturn image in the middle of Gemini as 2003-4, as Saturn's opposition was on 1st January 2004, and that Saturn season was split equally between 2003 and 2004. I was able to image the planet in November 2003; I was not able to photograph Saturn around that opposition because I was serving for the Turkish Air Force back then.

I’m wondering why there’s just one image of Saturn labeled 2003-4, near the left of the top pic. (See attached screen grab, which is now a kinder, gentler file size.) Maybe that’s where it does its little back and forth jig in its orbit as viewed from Earth?

Rob
Screen Shot 2022-08-19 at 1.17.55 PM.jpg

As Mark Goldfain (MarkBour) guessed, I did not use any other planet images in this panorama. In the duration of this Saturn year, Jupiter lapped Saturn not only once, but twice, in 2000 and 2020. Putting all Jupiter images between 1993 and 2022 would make it something different (but hardly less interesting, I must confess).

Coincidentially, I was able to photograph Jupiter and Saturn's paired retrograde motions in both 2000 and 2020.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap201212.html
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap011220.html

Tunç Tezel

Wouldn't Jupiter have crossed paths during the conjunction?

No planet can be seen. I wonder if they were digitally removed? I don't know though.

During the conjunction of December 2020, Jupiter and Saturn were about 20 diameters of Jupiter apart in apparent position. While this was close, and for some telescopes, you could get them both in the same frame, if the image was taken in that month, I guess our APOD creator did not try to get an image of Jupiter in with the image of Saturn that they used.

I’m wondering why there’s just one image of Saturn labeled 2003-4, near the left of the top pic. (See attached screen grab, which is now a kinder, gentler file size.) Maybe that’s where it does its little back and forth jig in its orbit as viewed from Earth?

Rob
Screen Shot 2022-08-19 at 1.17.55 PM.jpg

A great question to ask the photographer. Maybe they got the image shown very near January 1 of 2004. But the retrograde motion of Saturn is something that happens every year, and lasts for about 4 months. So, I don't think that's the explanation. I don't think the photographer got Saturn at the same date each year, and probably not even close to the same date. Actually, I don't think, from a given place on the Earth, that you can capture Saturn near the same date year after year. (?)

[rstevenson]

Thank you for the explanation sir, and for the reminder of your other APODs. I particularly like the 2020 one.

Rob

[MarkBour]

Hello,

I labeled the Saturn image in the middle of Gemini as 2003-4, as Saturn's opposition was on 1st January 2004, and that Saturn season was split equally between 2003 and 2004. I was able to image the planet in November 2003; I was not able to photograph Saturn around that opposition because I was serving for the Turkish Air Force back then.

...

Coincidentially, I was able to photograph Jupiter and Saturn's paired retrograde motions in both 2000 and 2020.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap201212.html
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap011220.html

Tunç Tezel

Thanks for clarifying that. I loved looking back at your other APODs as well.

So, how does one take 30 years of Saturn images? Did you plan to do it for that long when you were just starting out? Did you use the same equipment over all that time? In any case, that's really impressive consistency!

[canopia]

I started photographing Saturn and Jupiter at least one per year (and generally more) after getting into astrophotography in late 1992. The first images in 1993 were not close to their oppositions, but in the later years I tried to catch them close enough to their oppositions. When you wait long enough, you accumulate a good deal of images and events in the sky start to repeat. As I am especially fascinated by long-term motions and photographing them, putting together this Saturn set was an eventuality I guess.

Tunç Tezel

Hello,

I labeled the Saturn image in the middle of Gemini as 2003-4, as Saturn's opposition was on 1st January 2004, and that Saturn season was split equally between 2003 and 2004. I was able to image the planet in November 2003; I was not able to photograph Saturn around that opposition because I was serving for the Turkish Air Force back then.

...

Coincidentially, I was able to photograph Jupiter and Saturn's paired retrograde motions in both 2000 and 2020.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap201212.html
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap011220.html

Tunç Tezel

Thanks for clarifying that. I loved looking back at your other APODs as well.

So, how does one take 30 years of Saturn images? Did you plan to do it for that long when you were just starting out? Did you use the same equipment over all that time? In any case, that's really impressive consistency!