My first image of Saturn for the year 2000.  This image is much sharper that the previous one at f30.  This is due to better seeing and the fact that I tweaked my collimation.    Compare this to the 1999 images and you'll notice that the rings now appear much more open.

NOTE:  I'm taking credit for Mimas, even though I'm not certain that the dot shown is not an artifact of the processing. Over the 15 sec exposure, the moons trailed slightly at f30. I ran MaxEnt on the image and two images appeared for each of the moons (one brighter than the other) as the routine converged. At the location I've marked as Mimas, I also obtained two images, but the "Correct" one was also immersed in a ring caused by the planet glow and an artifact of the convolution routines. But it is in the correct location.     Click here to go back.