Many people regard Saturn as the most beautiful planet. It certainly is a stunning site at even a small telescope.

Left: Saturn on 22 March 2004, Celestron 11 & Philips ToUCam Pro webcam

Above: Saturn at 1 April 2008, Celestron 11 + 3x Barlow 15 frames per second, 1/16 sec exposures, DMK BF21, typically 2800 frames per colour, of which half were used.

Left:

Jupiter in the early morning of 29 September 2011, 30 cm newton and DMK21 camera plus 3 x barlow; the moon is Io.

Note that Io is somewhat elongated in the only one minute AVI-movie from which this picture was derived! To watch the movements of the various moons of Jupiter is exciting!

No filter was used unfortunately; so no colour. Also a somewhat fuzzy appearance. But hey, my very best Jupiter so far!

At right Jupiter in colour; less details, but probably more pleasing to the eyes.

And it also shows the big red spot!

Above: From left to right: Mars in 2010 with 12" newton @ F/16.5. A duo on 4 March 2010 at 22h and 21 h CEST. A duo on 14 Oct. 2005 and one on Aug 1, 2003.

Mars with 30 cm newton in luminance, red, green and blue light and a synthesis in colour; some 7000 pics were stacked for the last image, which has the apparent diameter of only 1/150x the moon

Pluto (officially no longer a planet) photographed with a Celestron 11 at f/3.3, two minutes only. Within as little as 10 minutes the movement was noticable!

The frame size is about a quarter of a degree.

Black & white:

Venus, with Celestron 11, ST-8E + H-alpha filter to dim the light beam (!), 0.11 sec in December 2000 (above) and Februari 2001 (down).

In the centre is Venus seen against the orange coloured sun on 8 June 2004.