Andrew McCarthy, Astrophotographer Who Can Take The Clearest Photos Of The Planet Saturn

JAKARTA - An astrophotographer has taken the clearest image of Planet Saturn as it made its closest approach to Earth this year.

Planet Earth moves almost directly between Saturn and the sun on Sunday, August 14 in an annual celestial event known as the 'opposition'.

This is the time when the gas giant is closest to our planet and is in its full phase, so it can create beautiful sights even with the naked eye.

Andrew McCarthy avoided the Arizona monsoon in search of clearer skies for a glimpse of the ringed planet over Los Angeles, USA, on Sunday.

From the roof of the multi-storey car park, he used two cameras to take more than 100.000 images of Saturn, before layering them together to create a spectacular shot.

The result is as the iconic rings illuminate the planet against a darkened sky, with some of Saturn's many moons appearing like stars around them.

"This was captured using an 11' telescope and two cameras, one for color and one for detail," McCarthy said, as quoted by the Daily Mail. "It's made up of more than 100.000 individual picture frames taken over about 30 minutes in the early hours of the morning."

"I used the parking garage to elevate myself above air currents that distort things closer to the ground, and lights so they don't affect the image because the planet is so bright," he added.

On Sunday, Saturn was 750 million miles (1.3 billion km) from Earth, and moving at an average speed of 6.02 miles (9.69 km) per second.

It reached its point of opposition at 18:00 p.m. BST (13:00 p.m. EDT) shining at a star magnitude of 0.3.

This event occurs every 54 weeks because it takes the second largest planet in our solar system about 29.5 years to complete one orbit of the sun.

As a result, each year we have to travel a little further in orbit to catch up and pass Saturn.

Moving almost three times as fast, Earth aligns with Saturn every 378 days. In 2023 Saturn will be in opposition on August 27, and in 2024 it will be on September 8.

McCarthy was forced to drive from Arizona to capture crystal-clear images, due to the upcoming rainy season. "The southwest has been getting a lot of clouds and it's raining at night," he said.

"With planetary photography, it's very different from many other types of sky photography because the planets themselves are very small," he added. "The air currents will basically just cover up images of Saturn and Jupiter or any detail and are completely indistinct."

Andrew's love of the universe began when he was only nine years old when he peered through his father's telescope in his backyard and caught a glimpse of Saturn for the first time.

“By luck, the 'star' I pointed to was not a star at all. It is a completely different planet. Saturn, complete with rings, and moon, was in the lens of my eye,” he recalled.

“I experienced what I can only describe as a life-changing perspective shirt. I realized that as I went about my day-to-day life, there was a whole universe out there that I completely ignored."