Lunar and planetary imager Alan Friedman of Buffalo, New York, just sent me a terrific animation he made of Saturn. And it took him a while to do it. Friedman combined 6 years of Saturn observations to create the animation. It shows how the plane of the planet’s ring system has changed during that time as viewed from Earth.
The animation’s final frame is not an image Friedman captured at the telescope. He assembled that frame from earlier 2009 observations to display how the planet will appear September 4, 2009, when the rings will lie edge-on to our line of sight.
On that date, only 11° separates Saturn and the Sun, and the planet will be only 5° above the horizon at sunset. That situation makes Saturn almost impossible to observe.
In the fall of 2009, Saturn will emerge from the Sun’s glare in the early morning sky. At that time, observers on Earth will have their first glimpses of its north pole in 14 years.
Friedman used a 10-inch Astro-Physics Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope and an Imaging Source DMK21AF04 CCD camera to record the images. You can see the individual photographs in the second image.
See additional images of Saturn in our Online Reader Gallery.