Saturn Storm in STrZ 9th July 2009

[Quark]

Hi All,

Well, the weather has been pretty crook for a while now on the nights that I need to attempt to image the storm in the STrZ on Saturn that I have been tracking since January.

Tonight there was some cloud around and the seeing was about 6/10.
I captured 3 sets of RGB's but only one set was worth processing. My first set of RGB's when the storm would have been at the CM was just too close to twilight, my second set 15 minutes later was reasonable data and the third set of RGB's suffered as Saturn moved into the top of my neighbors palm tree.

I was extremely pleased when I processed this RGB image as the storm in the STrZ still survives. It is hard to detect but never the less it is there.

The rings tonight were open 2.9 degrees relative to Earth. This may be my final image of Saturn for this apparition. I am very pleased to have picked up the storm although it is hard to see, I thought it may have finally dissipated as I could not detect it back on the 1st July, although that was in very bad seeing.

This storm may well end up being the longest lived ever recorded at Saturn.

Thanks for looking
Regards
Trevor

[Dennis]

Hi Trevor

I was surprised when I saw the title of this thread and it prompted me to fire off The Sky 6 Pro which shows Saturn as transiting at 3:54pm AEST and setting at 9:42pm!

A great effort and I’m surprised you managed to record the storm at such a low altitude in the poor seeing. I admire your dedication!

Cheers

Dennis

[Alchemy]

very interesting.

[Quark]

Thanks Dennis, Saturn was at an altitude of about 35 degrees for the image that I posted. Being so far west we are on CST. It would be easier for amateurs on the eastern seaboard to capture the storm when it as at the CM. At that time the sky is still very bright out here, much brighter than at the same time on the east coast.

Being so low and so close to sunset the data is never going to be very good, but it doesn't have to be. The images just need to be good enough to confirm whether or not the storm still survives.

I sent my data to Georg Fischer as soon as I had processed it. The time difference is such that at 9pm CST it is about 11 am on the same day at Graz in Austria. Georg got back about an hour later with the news that the very dim nature of the storm in my image supports the data he is receiving from the RPWS instrument on the Cassini spacecraft, the signal has been relatively weak for the past few weeks but it is still there.

[bird]

Nicely done Trevor.

cheers, Bird