Saturn July 27th in good seeing

[Quark]

Imaged Saturn July 27th covering 2 hrs 28 min’s of Saturn rotation. This adds to my July 25th Saturn data covering 2 hrs 16 min’s of Saturn rotation along with my July 26th Saturn data covering 2 hrs 46 min’s of Saturn rotation. This has been my first opportunity this apparition for three consecutive nights of good data with each night capturing data over quite extended periods.

These data complete a hi-res survey of the state of Saturn’s atmosphere as at the end of July 2022. Of course I was driven to do this in an attempt to recover the long lived AV. My final data set of the AV was in November 4th 2021 where it was quite well resolved; sadly I have seen no evidence of the AV this apparition. Maybe it still survives but is beyond the resolving power of my telescope, I guess HST OPAL will determine this.

My July 27th data is quite interesting with great depth of resolved small scale detail, the best of the data is exceptional.
Both my 685nm IR and RGB polar maps define the north polar hexagon surprisingly well.
I note a bright ripple on the Southern edge of the NNTeB at approx Lat+48.1 L3 46.2, a large elongated bright feature Lat+30 L3 89.2 Note; in the best of the data there are at least another nine bright spots all aligned along the Southern edge of the NTrB either side of the aforementioned large elongated bright feature. Two prominent EZ ripples impinging up into the NEB are very well resolved at approx Lat+15.1 L1 334.9 and Lat+14.3 L1 308.

Of particular interest is the very well defined v-thin cloud band in the NEB parallel with and very near the border of the EZ /NEB that seems to be associated with the highest amplitude ripple. This cloud band extends across the full width of the planet in these data but I note that the brightest and widest section of this cloud band immediately follows the peak of the highest amplitude ripple.

I also note Southern hemisphere detail with a v-large well defined dark spot at approx Lat-44.5 L3 118.1 along with another dark spot at approx Lat-30.9 L3 93.4

Obviously I have a significant amount of data from this session; all has been uploaded to PVOL with links here to the animations.

http://pvol2.ehu.eus/pvolimages/saturn/s2022-07-27_15-25_685nmIR_tba.gif

http://pvol2.ehu.eus/pvolimages/saturn/s2022-07-27_15-21_r_tba.gif

http://pvol2.ehu.eus/pvolimages/saturn/s2022-07-27_15-25_rgb_tba.gif

Regards
Trevor

[Dennis]

Hi Trevor

Lovely captures, processing, annotation, presentation and variety of views.:)

Can you please confirm that you haven't found a way to dial into the JWT and point it at Saturn to grab these.;):lol:

Cheers

Dennis

[Quark]

Thanks so much Dennis, surely it must be one of lifes great pleasures to caress fine detail out of truly good Saturn data. The HST OPAL program for 2022 has Saturn locked in with the target dates being +/- 40 days around opposition. I have not heard news that the observations have yet been done but could be anytime now.
It is good to see you still here Dennis it seems this has become mostly a Solar forum now days but from time to time I still post data that may be of interest . Not to many planetary people left here.

Cheers
Trevor

[Averton]

Impressive work as always Trevor.

[Dave882]

Wonderful shots!

[Anth10]

Trev,
I like your scientific dissection of this fascinating planet. The ripples are very interesting but in particular the dark spot grabbed my attention.

Awesome work- that rig must be a joy to use.
Keep up the great work.

Anthony

[Quark]

Thanks very much Clare & Peter, David and Anthony. Saturn, more than the other planets, is very dependent on having stable air to image through. Of course that is only one part of the equation. I am pedantic with regard to colimation and my Peltier cooler also helps. I designed and built this scope to be optimized for planetary imaging so it is very satisfying when things go right and hi-res data is produced.