TheSkySearchers

It has been a while since I ventured into Saturn. As far as I am concerned, it is the most difficult planet to sketch. Especially the elliptical shapes of the rings must be sketched very carefully. And even if you have a template you can see every outlier in the sketch. The colors and color differences between rings and sphere are also quite precarious.

I observed last night with my grabngo 102 mm F5 refractor. My rough sketches were only partially usable. The final sketch itself was quickly done, but scraping in the image processing took more time. It should be somewhat decently presentable, I think. Very much I am not satisfied with it. A ring system that would look like this in real life would tumble weird quickly I'm afraid. Also a bit ragged....

Seeing was fairly stable, I was able to get the maximum out of the achromatic with some ease with a 2.5mm Pentax-XO eyepiece. CA on Saturn is not too bad, I noticed before. I've read more reports with good seeing. Anyway, here it is:



Best impression of what I saw is when you look at the image from a distance of lets say nine feet.

Nice job John !

Well beyond my artistic capabilities at any distance !!

Excellent rendering John. I admire your patience and skill.

Great sketch John! Captures what one can see at the EP quite nicely.

Nice work John and certainly VROD quality for your necessitated sensitive observation of Saturn. Congratulations on winning the award for today!!!

very nice work of the eye , congrat on the vrod , thx .

Fantastic drawing of Saturn John!

Well done, John! Congrats on your VROD!

Dave

I found my next victim for my sketch, I'm obviously talking about Saturn here.

Beautiful and inspiring

Very nice work John!

In the past days I observed Saturn again. This time with my 120 mm Skywatcher Evostar. (ED APO)
I noticed some differences with the 102 mm F5 Achromat. The differences are subtile though.
- At the end of the rings one can see more contrast.
- I noticed a darker shadow of the rings on the planet.
- On the whole the image has a bit more contrast.

I thought it would be nice to show both impressions next to each other. The second sketch is totally digital: I just added the alterations to the first one in Paint. ( took me more time than a whole new sketch though )


The other day I had the opportunity to observe the planet with the 130 mm Starfire (Astrophysics). That superb Apo refractor shows contrasts even better.

Last night at observatory Rijswijk, after repairing a NEQ6 that was somewhat expired due to use, we had a quick look at Saturn with our 9.25-inch Celestron. Although the scope was not yet fully up to temperature, this planetary - SCT in combination with a Leica Zoom eyepiece gave a very nice image.
It was striking that the shadow of the planet on the rings had become slightly larger again. Also the C-ring could be observed. In the sketch it is somewhat more pronounced than in reality. ( a sketcher's privilege )
I took the old digital version of the sketch, adjusted it, refined it and added the moons Enceladus, Tethys, Dione and Japetus.
One and all still took me much more time than I thought.
Voila:
Differences with former sketches in this topic are obvious.

Very nice observation and presentation John and thank you for sharing!

you have a very nice life like sketch , good representation of what is seen through the eye piece, detail and colours

Thank you for all kind words.
I have a version as seen through my 140mm Maksutov too. ( My OMC140 ) However, that one barely differs from the 120mm refractor version, so I won't tire you with that.