Saturn spent 2018 in the constellation Sagittarius, unusually bright as it always is here because its rings are about as wide open as they can be and therefore offering a greater surface area to reflect light. This evening, Saturn is at magnitude +0.06, which makes it approximately the brightness of Arcturus and a tad brighter than Vega. Unannotated image |
This image was acquired with a Nikon D40, which
has an APS-C sensor, so when paired with my old
Nikkor 55 mm lens it yields an effective focal length
of 82 or 83 mm. You can also see from
the appearance of the Lagoon or Trifid nebulae
that the camera does not capture the emissions that result
from electron
decay from n = 3 down to n = 2 (which
glows red) well at all, but the less frequently occuring
decays from n = 4, 5, or 6 down to n = 2 (resulting
in blue and violet light) does show up well in the camera.
Saturn is in the neighborhood of the great globular star cluster M-22 with the smaller globular cluster M-28 also in the field. I decided to convert that image into black and white because my Canon renders everything with a strong reddish cast because its IR filter has been modified for the purpose of allowing strong red colors to be captured. |