Cassini's Final Dive into Saturn

[glend]

On the 15th of Sept, at about 9:54pm AEST, Cassini will burn up in Saturn's atmosphere. With it oriented to transmit to Australia till the end, it might be visible as it flares out in the atmosphere. Does anyone plan to view or image this one time event? All you planetary imagers get ready. Hopefully Hubble is watching.:eyepop:

[doppler]

I'll have my 180mm mack cass and cam running, you never know might catch something. Btw there is another thread here somewhere about the event.
Ok found the link

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=160596&highlight=cassini

[kkara4]

i will be ready and waiting. this presents a very unique opportunity which has not been witnessed with modern cameras by amateurs. my hypothesis is that the flash will be too dim, but i don't intend to let my hypothesis go untested.

[RobF]

Did anyone get any images of the burn up?

[glend]

According to the NASA live feed, it did not burn up as there is no oxygen in the atmo to support combustion, rather it vapourised in the friction which produced extreme heat. So likely there was no visual light trail to capture, although IR might have been detectable.
The NASA live feed did show the X and S band signal graph coming from Cassini, and the telemetry report on thruster activity (which indicated Cassini fighting against the atmo drag). The thruster activity gradually became fast and faster till it was constant as Cassini fought to maintain stability for broadcast. After the red line of the thrusters the X and S band signal levels rapidly dropped away to lose of signal at approximately 1000 miles above the could tops.

I suggest watching the NASA live feed on utube, it is comprehensive and you can move forward on the time line bar to jump to parts that are most interesting. It's about an hour long, with the atmo entry in the last 15 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5Ho30EMRm4&t=3955s

[kkara4]

thanks for the link Glen.

i continuously imaged in RG610 from 21:35 to 22:16. about 200GB of video to go through. i was watching on the screen from 21:55 (loss of signal) to 22:05 before going back inside to check the JPL live feed.

didnt notice any flash, but i was running at 100fps and previewing at 10fps, and turbulence was highly variable (actually some good seeing in bits despite 30 degrees alt).

i will feed the videos into JID shortly, and manually inspect the videos immediately following LOS.