Saturn 10th June 2009

[Quark]

Hi All,
Well, I thought it would be appropriate to crack the thousand post mark on IIS with an image of Saturn.

We have had some very wintery weather over the past week and last night it was clear as and would have been truly excellent for planetary imaging other than for the Jetstream, which I think, swung pretty well over my observatory.

Saturn is becoming an increasingly difficult target in the early evening. The temperature in the outback drops rapidly after sunset.
Last night at 7:30 CST, the time of the captures for the image I have posted, the ambient and primary mirror temp were 5 degrees C. Overnight our temp went to 0 degrees C.

The separation between the Earth and Saturn continues to increase, last night it was 1,411,300,000 km this is an increase of 77,200,000 since the 9th May 2009. In the same period the rings, relative to Earth, have closed from 4.144 degrees to 3.848 degrees. Last night the apparent equatorial radius of Saturn was 8.808 arc sec's, this is also reducing as the Earth / Saturn separation increases.

The storm I have been tracking since January is not on this side of Saturn, hopefully I will image that tonight, however this image does demonstrate how dark the rings are becoming.

Thanks for looking.
Regards
Trevor

[Paul Haese]

Yep pretty dark now, good image given the conditions Trevor. I got the scope out cooling last night and it dropped down to 3 degrees here by 330 am. Then an inversion came in and it went up 2 degrees. This sort of thing makes imaging quite hard. Nice to see you got a capture.

[iceman]

Excellent Trevor, amazing how dark the rings are.

Well captured! It's well past me being able to image it now, thanks to trees in the NW.

[Quark]

Thanks Mike, I have the same problem with a palm tree that Saturn descends into at about 9 pm. I probably only have another couple of weeks of capturing the storm before I lose Saturn.



Thanks Paul, it has been a while since there has been really good seeing. Regardless of the seeing I make an attempt every four nights to capture the storm. I am in the throws of processing my images of the storm taken tonight, again the seeing was pretty ordinary with high altitude cloud coming through but the storm is still visible.

[Kevnool]

Another great image again Trev.
Also Trev when is the next college night Trev and our observing night as ive been busy of late.
cheers Kev.

[Lester]

Thats a very good image Trevor for the conditions you are getting and still reasonabley sharp with the jetstream.

[Quark]

Thanks Kev,
Tonight 12th June is our next night at the college, out last night for this semester is Fri 26th June at the college and Sat 27th June out the Nine Mile is our next observing night.

[Quark]

Thanks Lester,
It is unusual for us to have the Jet stream linger for so long over us. It is most frustrating for me as I am sure it is for you.

[bird]

Nicely done Trevor, thanks!

cheers, Bird

[Quark]

Thanks Bird,

How is Nemesis coming along?

[Matty P]

Excellent image Trevor. The rings are very dark indeed.

Great work. :thumbsup: