saturn's disappearing rings 11/23/24

Saturn's rings disappear
9/13/25 7:08.3 UTC
11/1/24 6:08.4 UTC
11/23/25 4:01.3 UTC

Saturn's rings are tilted 27 degrees to the axis of the solar system.  During the course of a saturnian year (29.5 earth years) saturn will have two "equinoxes" with the rings perfectly edge on relative to the sun (once every 13-15 years).  As the rings are extremely thin they will seem to disappear at this point.  On May 6, 2025 when saturn was only visible during daylight, the rings were edge on (my capture attempt failed).  the rings were again edge on on November 23, 2025*.  The animation above shows the rings fading as they tilt to edge-on over the past 2 months.

*why were the rings on edge twice?

my guess is that there are actually 2 different "on edge" conditions.

1. perfectly on edge relative to the sun.  on this day the rings will cast no shadow.

2. perfectly on edge relative to the earth.  

this is rarely at the same time as #1.

In this case my assumption is that the rings were on edge in May.  

Then the earth zipped past saturn (saturn in retrograde for you astrology buffs) with saturn "catching up again" in november. 

This explains the prominent ring shadow across the face of saturn as the rings are slightly less than perpendicular to the sun.  

I will say that visually, the rings were faint but still visible.  guessing this is due to the high dynamic range of the mark II eyeballs.  

they were clearly present on longer exposure images.  

Imaging details:

Seeing has been terrible for the most part this season

exemplified on all of these nights

ZWO ASI664MC

baader IR/UV blocking filter

the sunobserver eADC 

celestron 11" Edge HD, no barlow

East Bluff, CA

9/13/25 7:08.3 UTC

7x90 sec

FPS (avg.)=158

Shutter=6.255ms

Gain=431 (71%)

11/01/25 6:08.4 UTC

7x90 sec

FPS (avg.)=145

Shutter=6.829ms

Gain=431 (71%)

11/23/25 4:01.3 UTC

7x90 sec

FPS (avg.)=173

Shutter=5.714ms

Gain=431 (71%)

captured with firecapture

stacked in autostakkert (upsampled 1.5x)

combined in winjupos 

processed in registax and/or biggsky

photoshop

processing was not consistent across nights

so had to work in photoshop 

to match brightness etc for the animation