Saturn March 8th in good seeing.

[Quark]

Imaged Saturn March 8th in good seeing. The North polar hexagon is well seen, the collar surrounding the hexagon is distinctly greenish, as it also was back in 2013. The 742nm IR data shows the vortex at the pole in the centre of the hexagon as a quite distinct dark spot. Have also attached a set of 742nm IR, R and RGB polar projections.


Regards
Trevor

[Quark]

Polar projections.

[ags_]

Getting up early or staying all night has rewarded you with some great captures Trevor. I'll have to get a tutorial on polar projection if I manage the same this year.
Regards
Phil

[Rick Petrie]

Nice set Trevor,sharp as a pin.:thumbsup::thumbsup:

[oernulfs]

Very nice images!

In Norway Saturn climbs to a "disappointing" 11 dergrees above the horizon....

[astronobob]

Facinating and details are as awesome !

[miki63au]

Beautiful images Trevor!
Mick.

[John Hothersall]

Another good trawl of beauties Trevor.

John.

[Shiraz]

very nice work Trevor. I have it in the back of mind that you were going to try to measure the hex rotation rate - if so, is that still on the cards (or have you already done it)?

[kkara4]

Very nice Trevor! i cant bring myself to drag the scope out in the morning, ill have to wait till Winter for Saturn :P

[Quark]

Thanks Krishan, having an observatory certainly helps but after 3 successive nights of imaging Jupiter and Saturn then the many hours of processing I was not unhappy that March 9th was cloudy.



Thanks Ray. We published our paper on the hex rotation March 7th 2014 in one of the AGU peer reviewed journals in the U.S. "Geophysical Research Letters". It was titled "The long term steady motion of Saturn's hexagon and the stability of it's enclosed jetstream under seasonal changes". We concluded that the rotation rate for the hex 2008 - 2014 is 10hrs 39min's 23.01sec's +/- 0.01s. Further to this I am still working on a long term polar projection animation of the hex, based on SysIII. I currently have data from Feb 2013 to Mar 2015. I will continue on with this over the next few years and eventually hope to demonstrate the relationship between SysIII rotation and that of the hex in a graphic manner, sort of a time lapse.



Thanks John.



Thanks Mick.



Thanks Bob.



Thanks Ornulf, 11 degrees would certainly be disappointing.



Thanks Rick.



Thanks Phil, must say it's getting harder to recover after multiple nights of imaging Jup and Saturn. I have been very productive over the last 8 years, Broken Hill has historically been an excellent site, I am approaching 3,000 data sets on PVOL, BAA & ALPO Japan with over 12,000 records of measurement from data sent to the JUPOS project. If the computer models I rely on predict even the possibility of doable conditions I make the effort.

[Shiraz]

thanks for that info - very well done :thumbsup: