Saturn storms Jan 27th

[Quark]

Hi All,

Imaged Saturn this morning over a session of 2 1/2 hrs.

It was quite windy with scattered cloud scudding though and the seeing was variable, 5 to 7/10 mostly.

Captured 5 RGB & 807nm IR data sets. Had to drop one RGB due to cloud interference during capture.

This data was definitely not good enough to warrant resampleing so is at the native image scale of my setup.

Have attached 1 RGB & 807nm IR data set as well as an animation of my 4 RGB's and 5 IR images. Both sets cover 2 1/2 hrs of rotation.

The RGB animation shows no decline in the size or brightness of this section of the storm while the IR animation shows several dark spots within the storm structure.

Thanks for looking
Regards
Trevor

[John Hothersall]

Seeing clearly not so good this time but best stretch of storm nicely on show. Your IR807nm is a real eyeopener, I got my first decent IR last night in a short run and I stacked almost all of them as they stayed in focus most of time. The IR shows a darker representation of the structure which is most interesting.

Just wondered Trevor what focal length would you push your system to on a 10/10 seeing night?

John.

[Quark]

Thanks John, yes the seeing was pretty ordinary mostly (about 5/10) with the occassional few seconds of steadiness which would have been up to about 7/10 but the former state persisted for the majority of the time. However, conditions like that are generally the bread and butter for my 807nm IR filter and considering the conditions, I am pretty pleased with how the IR came out. As you have noted, there really is some very interesting structure within the storm that comes up nicely in IR.

I have designed my new scope to get my imaging unit (Flea3+filterwheel+ 5x PM, which is one sealed assembly) to echieve focus as close to the wall of the scope as possible. This leaves me with a focal length of about 10 m. That is what I currently image at but if the seeing was very good I also have a 30mm adaptor that I turned up with my lathe that I could also use that would add another metre or so.

When Jupiter was at opposition the only way I could fit it on my 640x480 chip with the 5x PM was to unscrew the top section of the 5x PM and make my own very low profile adaptor to screw the optical section of the PM into and then screw the adaptor into the filter wheel making the whole thing a fixture, a sealed unit.

By the way, I have never seen 10/10 seeing, well not in Australia, on my trip to observe with the Keck's in Hawaii, one night on Keck I with Chuck Stiedel we had 1/3 of an arc sec seeing, reckon that would have been the best I have experienced.

[Troy]

Nice shots Trevor, love the animations :D

[Lester]

Thanks for the views Trevor, shows the storm well.

[Paul Haese]

Trev this is way better seeing than I saw this morning. I tried for the main head again and saw utter crap again. I like the detail you got in the knots behind the main head.

Just in the process of ordering the flea. Might give you a call next week once sorted.

[Ric]

Thanks for the images and animations Trevor.

The storm is an amazing sight to see, I read on another site that it estimated to be the size of ten Earths.

Cheers

[Shiraz]

Excellent images Trevor. Animation seems to help a lot in conveying the full effect of this storm - its so darn complex and extended. We certainly live in interesting times. Regards

[Quark]

Thanks Troy, I think the animations often convey much more than can be gleaned from just looking at the still images.



Thanks very Lester, sure is a monster.



Thanks Paul, the new USB3 Flea3 would probably be the go.



Thanks very much Ric, it virtually extends all of the way around the planet and is without precident.



Thanks Ray, yep, it sure does take some time to put the animations together but I think it is worth it.