Skirting between the clouds after midnight, I caught my first look through my new telescope. Astronomers describe these inaugural views as "first light." Saturn is the showcase for optical quality, from the sharp cleft of the "Cassini Division" in the rings, to the crisp shadow that the rings cast on the surface of the planet. The view is actually sharper when viewed with the human eye through an eyepiece. Our minds subconsciously select and remember the moments of sharpness, and filter away moments of blurring by atmospheric turbulence. The camera records both sharp and blurry apparitions, requiring manipulation of the image data to re-create these episodes of clarity.
Saturn continues to grab the headlines with the continuing Cassini Mission. You can read more about the mission at NASA's CASSINI MISSION HOMEPAGE.
The top photo was taken with a Philips ToUCam through a TEC 140 mm telescope with a 4x Powermate amplifier. A total of 1000 images were selected from 2000 exposures, and processed with K3CCDTools and Photoshop. A few nights later, steadier skies allowed me to obtain the sharper picture on the right combining the best 200 of 1000 images.
The last of the big-budget, big-mission planetary probes, Cassini stands over two stories tall and weighs more than six tons. At $3.4 billion, its budget dwarfs the recent Mars Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor missions!"