Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy captured his clearest picture ever of Saturn as the planet approaches its closest point to Earth this year, as our planet moved almost directly between Saturn and the Sun, in an annual celestial event, and this is the moment when Saturn is closest to being We are in full swing.
And according to the British newspaper “Daily Mail”, Andrew McCarthy avoided the monsoon weather in Arizona in search of clearer skies to catch a glimpse of the ringed planet above Los Angeles, in the United States.
McCarthy used two cameras to capture more than 100,000 images of Saturn, before stitching them together to create a stunning shot.
The result was out of this world, with the iconic rings illuminating the planet against a dark sky, with some of Saturn’s many moons appearing like stars around it.
“This was captured with an 11-inch telescope and two cameras, one for color and one for detail,” McCarthy said.
It was also created from over 100,000 individual photo frames taken over a period of about 30 minutes in the early hours of the morning.
Saturn was 750 million miles (1.3 billion km) from Earth, traveling at an average speed of 6.02 miles (9.69 km) per second.
This event occurs every 54 weeks because it takes the second largest planet in our solar system approximately 29.5 years to complete one orbit of the sun.
Saturn
