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Details:
I watched Titan's shadow cross Saturn during the night of Aug 18-19 through a 10" Dob and a 6" Mak-Newt. It took high magnification (from 150x to 350x) to spot the small black dot on the ball of the planet. I thought it strange that the shadow was equally perceived in both scopes, but the extra aperture and higher magnification of the Dob appeared to be matched by the sharper, contrastier optics on the more rigidly mounted Maksutov.
Meanwhile my 4.25" astrograph was busy taking subs of deep-sky objects, but partway through I interrupted it to attempt a photo of the transit despite not having suitable equipment or software to do proper planetary astrophotography.
Surprisingly, I got something. Is Titan's shadow real? It's certainly not AI-constructed nor is anything manually painted in. But Saturn was only 18 pixels across at the scope's prime focus. Could the tiny shadow really make an impression on even one of those pixels? But the very first sub did have its darkest pixel at a plausible location on Saturn for the event. Of course, it could just be noise too, since later subs were more questionable. I admit it--I'm picking and choosing. Whether shadow or noise, the image comprises real data from the real event that I witnessed firsthand. Therefore, it can serve as a suitable souvenir of the occasion.
Finally, the moons were much easier to see than the shadow in the two visual scopes. I could even tell something was odd with the moon immediately right of the rings; that turned to be the merged image of Dione and Enceladus, which were closest to each other right then. Too dim for visual sighting, Hyperion showed up unexpectedly in the photo.
Images:
#1: full FOV
#2: zoomed in for layout of Saturn's moons
#3: zoomed in more for Saturn with Titan's shadow
Astro data (all times are MDT):
Transit times from Sky & Telescope, other stats from Sky Safari Pro 6
... transit began: 11:52pm Aug 18
... transit midpoint: 2:01am Aug 19
... transit ended: 4:00am Aug 19
... visually observed from 1:00-3:00am, photo taken ~1:30am
Photo data:
Panasonic GX8, Askar FRA 600 (ap=4.25", FL=600mm), iOptron GEM45G mount
... Saturn itself: (f/5.6, 1/100 sec, ISO 400)
... Saturn's moons: (1 sec)
... surrounding stars: (30 sec)
... N down, W left; FOV = 1.6° x 1.25°
... date: Aug 19, 2025 1:30am MDT (= Aug 19, 2025 07:30 UT)
Photographer's website:
No URL provided.
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