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Old 22-10-2019, 12:50 PM
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Quark (Trevor)
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Broken Hill Astronomer published in Nature

Nature is the most prestigious peer reviewed science journal in the world and the holy grail of all science researchers, regardless of their field, is to be published there.

Last night the embargo on my latest co-authored Nature paper was lifted as it was published online in Nature Astronomy. This came from the long time collaboration I have had with the lead author Agustin Sanchez-Lavega who included me as a co-author. Agustin is a Professor of Physics, head of Applied Physics and head of the Planetary Sciences Group at the University of the Basque Country in Bilboa Spain.

This paper, of course Saturn, is with regard to a storm in the NPR which evolved from a tiny bright spot in late March 2018 to a quite amazing structure virtually encompassing a whole latitude band approx 8000 klm wide by the time 60 Minutes took me to JPL in July 2018. Carolyn Porco was unaware of the new storm and it is one of the highlights of my life being able to use our producer’s laptop to show her how this had evolved from just a spot into this stunning intricate structure. Her face just lit up, she was just as excited as me.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-019-0914-9

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Trevor
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Old 22-10-2019, 01:09 PM
gary
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Hi Trevor,

Wow! That is absolutely fabulous! Well done & congratulations!

Best Regards

Gary & Mai
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Old 22-10-2019, 01:55 PM
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multiweb (Marc)
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Top stuff Trevor. All your hard work paid off. You must be stoked.
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Old 22-10-2019, 02:28 PM
morls (Stephen)
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Congratulations, a great achievement and contribution to knowledge.
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Old 22-10-2019, 03:24 PM
Dennis
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Lovely story Trevor and congratulations, such dedicated work and your passion for astronomy are deserving of this recognition.

Cheers

Dennis
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Old 22-10-2019, 03:55 PM
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Sunfish (Ray)
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Great work. Well deserved .
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Old 22-10-2019, 04:20 PM
PeterM
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Bravo Trevor!` this is fantastic! Congratulations indeed.
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Old 22-10-2019, 08:49 PM
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Well done Trevor. Congratulations

Best
JA
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Old 22-10-2019, 10:04 PM
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B awesome effort Trevor!
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Old 23-10-2019, 07:29 AM
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Retrograde (Pete)
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Congratulations Trevor - a fine achievement!
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Old 23-10-2019, 12:36 PM
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Quark (Trevor)
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Thanks very much to all for your replies to my news.

The work of amateur astronomers is becoming ever more important, especially in the field of Planetary Science. Many amateurs contributed image data that was used in this paper. The "Supplementary Information" file also includes a table with every amateur listed who contributed image data used in the paper. Within the paper itself, in every instance where a image is used in a figure, acknowledgement of that particular imager is given.

It is very satisfying to see professionals acknowledge the effort of amateurs in this way especially in such a prestigious journal as Nature Astronomy.
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Old 23-10-2019, 07:11 PM
gary
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Science News is running an article by Maria Temming that reports on the
Nature Astronomy article that Trevor co-authored.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Maria Temming, Science News
Saturn saw some weird weather last year.

Telescope images have revealed a newfound type of storm activity that raged near Saturn’s North Pole in 2018, researchers report online October 21 in Nature Astronomy.

Until now, astronomers had seen only two kinds of Saturnian storms: relatively small storms about 2,000 kilometers across that appear as bright clouds for a few days and Great White Spots that are 10 times as large and last for months (SN: 4/14/15). The newly spotted weather disturbance was a series of four midsize storms. Each was several thousand kilometers across and lasted between about 1.5 weeks and about seven months.

Saturnian storms are thought to originate in water clouds hundreds of kilometers below the planet’s visible upper cloud cover. Studying such storms can offer a window into deep atmospheric goings-on that aren’t directly observable, says Agustín Sánchez-Lavega, who studies planetary atmospheres at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain.

Sánchez-Lavega and colleagues analyzed hundreds of telescope images taken by amateur astronomers, as well as pictures from by the Calar Alto Observatory in Spain and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. From late March to late October 2018, four unusual bright spots appeared in Saturn’s atmosphere near the North Pole, between the latitudes of 67° N and 74° N.

Computer simulations indicate that each midsize storm required about 10 times as much energy as a small storm to get going, but only about one-hundredth the energy required to brew up a Great White Spot.

The sighting of this storm outbreak “almost leaves more questions than it can give answers,” says Georg Fischer, a planetary scientist at the Space Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Graz not involved in the work.

For instance, the 2018 telescope images don’t show whether the newfound storms crackled with lightning. Small storms typically boast a few flashes per minute and Great White Spots several flashes per second. If similar midsize storms appear in the future, Fischer says, radio telescopes that monitor the gas giant’s tempests for lightning strikes could indicate whether middling storms are more similar to their small or giant counterparts. That might help scientists figure out how they form.

The timing of the 2018 storm sequence hints that it might have been a failed Great White Spot. These planetary-scale storms have been observed only seven times since 1876. But those few data points seem to indicate that Great White Spots form around the same latitudes once every 60 years or so. The last time Saturn sported a far-north Great White Spot, near the latitudes where the 2018 storm quartet cropped up, was in 1960.

It’s possible that a 2010 Great White Spot that formed farther south siphoned so much energy from Saturn’s atmosphere that there was only enough left to fuel a few middling storms, rather than a full-blown Great White Spot in 2018, Sánchez-Lavega says.

But planetary scientist Robert West, who wasn’t involved in the study, is skeptical that the 2010 Great White Spot could have interfered with storm activity farther north. That’s because gas swirling in Saturn’s atmosphere at different latitudes tends to stay in its own lane. West, of Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., suspects that the storm sequence in 2018 was not a failed Great White Spot, but “a whole different thing.” For now, however, the origins of those intermediate storms and how they relate to other weather phenomena on Saturn are still mysterious, he says.
Full article, images here :-
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...eat-white-spot
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Old 23-10-2019, 07:16 PM
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Atmos (Colin)
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That’s really awesome Trevor, I’ve always enjoyed seeing the planetary images you’ve posted on here and been stunned by the details you’ve been able to extract
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Old 24-10-2019, 08:54 PM
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Congrats again Trevor, another Saturnian feather in your cap! It was a treat to see one of my images featured in Figure 1 (middle of the top row), and good they acknowledged the many amateurs' data they used in the supplementary data. Australia was well represented, with (apart from Trevor and myself) Paul Haese, Mark Lonsdale, Phil Miles, Darryl Milika, Troy Tranter, Anthony Wesley, Leigh Westerland and Michael Wong also contributing one or more images.


After being at the DPS-EPSC meeting last month, it's really clear how grateful the professionals are for the amateur image contributions, the real value that can be got from modern amateur imaging, and quite how much the amateur data is actively used for outer planet research.
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