Saturn a few weeks after its opposition, August 2020.

Finally got a decent night for imaging Jupiter and Saturn, very low here in the UK (just around 15 degrees above the horizon).

Seeing was terrible, but I'm still relatively satisfied with the results, given how difficult these planets are this year from this latitude.

Another couple of high resolution images, taken on the Appennines, with quite a lucky seeing.
Jupiter is now rising earlier, and it was a welcome preview to the observing night.

Firstly I tried shooting on prime focus, using small magnification, and then I used a 2.5 barlow lens. The prime focus shooting should have been just a test, but it proved to be the better one, as I had troubles focusing with the barlow lens (we were already in “night” mode, and I had to darken a lot my monitor, so focusing was really difficult).

This is the prime focus shooting elaboration.

Red spot visible

Saturn is starting to rise earlier, and around 4am is starting to be fairly hight for a few shots.

Since we already finished observing I could remove my notebook darkening panel, and focus quite better with the 2.5x barlow.

A first glimpse on Saturn, waiiting for the next opposition. Seeing was very good.

It was also a very satisfying deep sky stargazing night (which was actually the main purpouse of our trip to the Appennines).

Spring constellations enable us to go really “deep”, with very far and suggestive galaxy clusters.