An old and young friend

Saturn and 4 moons. A compilation of stacked video frames taken with the 127mm Meade Apo refractor, 3x Barlow and QHY5llcol. video colour camera. Credit: Pip Stakkert

 " It's nice to see our old friend, the ringed planet Saturn shining yellow just over our southern horizon here at the Jodrell Plank Observatory in Oulton Broad, Suffolk. For the last few years Saturn has remained low in the sky and presents a number of altitude related difficulties for planetary imagers. Our view of the planet's rings changes over time on a cyclical basis and from our visual perspective the rings appear to be closing. In a few years time the rings will be edge on as seen from Earth. Saturn has 82 moons varying in size from the largest Titan, which is bigger than the planet Mercury, to the smallest about the size of a tennis court. Titan cannot be seen on this image as its orbit is larger than the field of view.

NGC 7000 the North American Nebula in the Constellation Cygnus. Image taken from Ed Sargisson's Observatory in Norwich. Credit: Ed Sargisson.

Our young and good friend to the Jodrell Plank Observatory, Ed Sargisson, imaged the North American Nebula from his location in central Norwich. The extensive glowing hydrogen gas is well portrayed in this excellent photograph. The difficulty of capturing faint nebula from a light polluted city cannot be over emphasised. The 'Cygnus Wall', a popular target for narrow band imagers, can be seen as the horizontal band of brighter red luminosity in the bottom right of the image" - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.