Saturn

At opposition, Saturn is typically about 793 million miles (1,269 million km) from the Earth, over twice as far away as Jupiter. Saturn is a gas giant, like Jupiter, and most of the planet we see represents its atmosphere. However, it receives much less solar energy at its great distance from the sun and the fact that the planet is smaller than Jupiter means that there is less internal heat to drive the planet’s weather. Atmospheric banding is muted and, visually, the planet appears golden with muted pastel color banding.
The magnificent rings are formed by a composite of millions of particles of ice and rock, most ranging in size from dust to sand. The rings, which tend to look white in a telescope, combined with the golden hue of the planet itself create a view that many consider to be the jewel of the solar system. The planet has over 50 verified moons along with a number that are still pending. These make up some of the most interesting satellites in the solar system, including the record for the largest moon of any planet – Titan. Click on Saturn on the [NASA Solar System Exploration] page for more information on this beautiful and fascinating planet.
Saturn is the most distant of the naked eye planets known in antiquity. It is equal in brightness to typical relatively bright stars, but has only ~15{2b0bc144790fa11bb8fc8c498deb34105c42d2474ec8eb04e7e0c4170d3818ff} of the brightness of Jupiter or Mars at opposition. When you go to image it you realize how little light is actually available. In smaller telescopes, Saturn is definitely a “dim bulb”, requiring longer, less favorable exposures. Saturn was also very low on the horizon during the 2017-2020 apparitions, further reducing its brightness and providing more opportunities for atmospheric distortion. Despite this, a number of passable images have been obtained. The tilt of the planet the past three years showing the rings very close to their optimal exposure. Over an 11 year cycle the tilt of the planet as we see it will begin to decrease until the rings will be viewed edge on and will barely be visible, at which point the perceived tilt reverses until well again get a good view of the ring structure.

The frustrations of imaging Saturn are many and it is not surprising that the planet has a relatively low priority, resulting in relatively few images despite its beauty!