This was night before closest approach, and even so, it was pretty brilliant (in that geeky kind of way that only astro people *really* appreciate. For me, this was right up there with the comet of April.
I’d never tried imaging Saturn before, because I thought “what’s the use?” Just another white dot. So last night’s outting to the southern edge of the city at 5pm delivered quite the surprise. Even through the live display of my 80D, Saturn appeared yellow and “bulgey”, suggesting of an orientation of the rings. But that could simply have been bias confirmation.
I was able to sneak a socially distanced peek through an 8inch reflector that was aligned, and son of a gun if the rings didn’t perfectly match with how they looks in my camera.
So I’m going to call it… my rig *Canon 80D, 80-200L, 2x doubler = 560mm of focal length. And can discern the rings. Even the space between the rings and the planet itself (if you squint and tilt your head slightly).
1600 ISO, f11. 1/15
It was a good night!