Saturn 01/02/2009 stills + EZn cloud Animation

[Quark]

Hi All,

What shocking weather for imaging, was setup by 1 am CSST, the temp was 29C. The sky didn't look all that bad but the image of Saturn from my DMK was a boiling mass. After about 50 minutes the cooling system on my primary started to have an effect and the images became more stable.

Imaged Saturn every 10 minutes from 15:00 UTC (1:30 am local) to 17:40 UTC (4:10 am local), the temp had cooled to 28C by then. Captured mainly R channel images looking for the possible storm structure that I imaged on 24th Jan.

Have fairly good data from 15:50 UTC to 17:40 UTC. The only structure present is a long lived cloud system in the EZn (Equatorial Zone north).

Attached is one R channel image showing the EZn centrally located. This image is a stack of the best 600 of 2300 frames.
One RGB showing the EZn cloud system, for this image the best 600 of 2300 frames from each channel were stacked to give a final image of 1800 frames.
The animation shows the rotation of Saturn and movement of the EZn cloud system over a 110 minute period.
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/uploads/SatEZnAnim.gif

Regards
Trevor

[HawaiiBill]

This is an exciting and beautifully captured image. Thank you for posting.

Bill Eger in Puna on Hawai`i Island.

[Quark]

Aloha Bill,

Thanks and great to see you on IIS.
Was over your way in the last week of October 08, had a tour of the Keck's and observed for two nights on Keck II with a research team from Swinburne University and one night on Keck I by invitation from Prof Chuck Steidel from Caltech. Still have not came back down to Earth just yet.

Regards
Trevor

[iceman]

Very well done again, Trevor. A fine image given the conditions.

I've been too tired to image Saturn for the last week or so but will give it a go tonight.