On Wednesday night I captured Saturn in above average seeing – the second time that week! When I’d finished processing the images, I noticed a faint Moon near the edge of Saturn, and a dark feature just under the ring plane.

When blinking between the two images, I saw that the feature had moved, so I check Starry Night Pro planetarium software and found that the small Moon was Rhea and the dark spot on Saturn’s disc was Rhea’s shadow.

You can see the animation of the two frames below.

Saturn with Rhea Shadow Animation

Continue reading to see the two colour images.

Read the rest of this entry »