Eight Moons Around Saturn - a photo on Flickriver

            A somewhat unusual event, all eight of Saturn's brightest moons captured in a single image. In the bottom section of this photo I've labeled each moon and superimposed an image of Saturn that was taken on the same night (shows true scale of the planet and its rings rather than the overexposed image that captured the moons).

Reading from left to right, the eight moons are as follows (with magnitudes and diameters): Hyperion (m = 15.1, diam. = 300km), Titan (m = 9.1, diam. = 5150km), Rhea (m = 10.3, diam. = 1530km), Tethys (m = 10.9, diam. = 1070km), Dione (m = 11.1, diam. = 1120km), Mimas (m = 13.5, diam. = 392km), Enceladus (m = 12.5, diam. = 494km), and Iapetus (m = 11.6, diam. = 1450km). The moon Hyperion is difficult to see, but it's definitely in there.

I wonder if it is possible for an amateur astronomer to capture more extraterrestrial, solar-system objects than this in a single image? Could this (nine objects counting both Saturn and its moons) be the limit and thus the record for such a challenge? Searching Flickr I can find a few images similar to mine, but none that show the relative brightness differences between the moons so clearly nor the inner moons so well (the only significant weakness in my image is the moon Hyperion, which at a magnitude of 15.1 is more than one half million times fainter than the planet Saturn).

Photographed on June 30, 2012 at 10:29PM PDT with a 5 inch aperture telescope and a Sony NEX-5N digital camera (for the moons: 5 seconds x 17, ISO 6400, f/21 at an effective focal length of 2640mm. For the properly exposed image of Saturn: 1/2 second, ISO 100). 

All rights reserved.

Taken on: June 30, 2012

Tags:

Saturn

Titan

Tethys

Iapetus

Dione

Enceladus

Mimas

Hyperion

Sony NEX-5N « less

Sets appears in: • The Planets

Groups appears in: • Astrophotography - Astronomy - Astrophysics • Astronomy

Stats: 1,933 views / 7 comments

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