Saturn dark spot & white spot May 20th

[Quark]

Hi All,

Imaged Saturn last night over a 2 hr session and have 5 "R", RGB & 807nm IR data sets.

I have been monitoring a dark spot on the edge of the great storm remnant and captured it in the first data set last night. Later in the night I also noticed an isolated white spot in the region of the recent SED's outburst.

Have attached the "R" & RGB that best show the dark spot which WinJUPOS puts at approx lat +43.4 L3 255.9.

The white spot is best seen in the RGB from 10:50 UTC where it is close to the CM, WinJUPOS puts it at approx lat +15.6 L3 336.2

Have also attached links to animations of all data sets. The dark spot comes up in both the "R" & RGB animations while the white spot appears to pop in and out of the RGB animation as it was only on the final 2 RGB's.

The 807nm IR animation is interesting as there is a dark spot within the great storm remnant that comes up nicely.

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/uploads/s2012-05-20_tba_r.gif (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/uploads/s2012-05-20_tba_r.gif)

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/uploads/s2012-05-20_tba_rgb.gif (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/uploads/s2012-05-20_tba_rgb.gif)

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/uploads/s2012-05-20_tba_ir.gif (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/uploads/s2012-05-20_tba_ir.gif)


Thanks for looking.
Regards
Trevor

[Dennis]

Hi Trevor

Loved the animations; the frame to frame quality was consistently high, making them look like the classical “out of the spaceship window” shots.

Cheers

Dennis

[DavidU]

All fantastic images & Gif's:thumbsup:

[Clayton]

Nice work Trevor:thumbsup:

[Matt Wastell]

Love seeing your Saturn work - highly detailed and always an adventure!

[carlstronomy]

:eyepop:
Fantastic images, my only hope is to be able to do half that good over the coming months and maybe longer. Awsome effort.

Carl

[Derek Klepp]

Very informative Trevor is there a chance that a Storm will reform in that area?

[Quark]

Thanks very much Dennis, it's been a while since I have had some good seeing, this night the prediction looked promising but never really delivered and just provided fleeting moments of very nice data mixed in with a fair bit of pretty ordinary data. Emils's AS 2 really did a great job of salvaging the best of it.



Thanks very much David, I always enjoy putting together animations if I can get enough data and as it turned out each animation hi-lights different detail or structure.



Thanks very much Rob.



Thanks very much Matt.


Thanks very much Carl, appreciate your comment. Look forward to seeing your work.



Thanks very much Derek, there is always the possibility of a new SED's outburst. Since 2008 I have been involved in tracking many of them. Some times they have lasted a few days, sometimes weeks or even months. The most recent outburst lasted from March 21st to April 21st. It is interesting to see this isolated white spot in the region of that particular outburst and I just heard back from my researcher, he is on holidays in Florida but did check out several recent dates for SED's activity and found none. It is still worth monitoring this region though.

[samilag]

Spectacular Saturn,
Never seen storm details so qualitative.

Animations very interesting to see evolution of polar zone

Thanks Trevor for these images

Giuseppe
Italy po valley

[Shiraz]

Outstanding work trevor - top shelf. Regards ray

[Derek Klepp]

Thanks for the reply Trevor I can now see why your Planetary viewings could become addictive. I view the Sun almost on a daily basis. Its that change that keeps me looking.The initial views and pics are always great but then I realise that it would be good to know what is going on and the driving forces behind these.I'm guessing that with your build up of Planetary data over several years and networking with others you are working towards a similar end of trying to understand what is going on.

[Troy]

Good images Trevor :thumbsup:

[Quark]

Thanks very much for your most generous words Giuseppe.



Thanks very much Ray.



Spot on Derek, reckon we all image for different reasons. My primary focus is on producing data of scientific value, this has led to my involvement in several pro/am collaborations. My data has been published by various researchers with the hi-light being last year with the peer reviewed journals "Science & Nature". More & more, professionals are recognizing the value of amateur data and utilizing it in their work, especially in the field of planetary science.

[Quark]

Thanks very much Troy

[asimov]

Nice work Trevor!

Hey just to create a bit of discussion, have you found it very hard to fail on getting a full CD despite bad seeing like I have this season? It's got to be the very nice altitude of the target..

I can remember a time when a planet imager that got a full CD on Saturn was right at the cutting edge but this season has thrown that idea in the recycle bin.

Thoughts?

[Quark]

Certainly agree Asi, this apparition, even in not great seeing the full CD has not really been an issue. Reckon the ring opening relative to Earth has helped with that but in my opinion a major contributing factor has been the superior performance in stacking of Emil's AS 2 over R6.

I think it has come to the point where the final processed image isn't really indicative of the average quality of the seeing over the duration of the capture. It is certainly possible to produce a quite reasonable result in less than great variable seeing. As long as there were moments of stability in the data then a result that belies the overall quality of the data is possible.

Also, the general proliferation of cameras with more sensitive CCD's operating at higher frame rates has obviously made life easier for planetary imagers.

[Lester]

Wonderful views presented again Trevor, thanks. Also enjoy reading the discussion. All the best.

[StephenM]

Beautiful imaging as always Trevor!



I didn't realise you'd been published in both Science and Nature last year Trevor. I remember reading one of them, but missed the second. Congratulations!!! As a scientist myself, I understand the significance of getting published in these journals (although unfortunately it hasn't happened to me yet...!)

Cheers,
Stephen

[RobF]

Stunning, as usual Trevor! :) :thumbsup:

[Quark]

Thanks very much Lester.



Thanks very much Rob.

[Quark]

Thanks very much Stephen, the Nature paper made the front cover of Nature. There were two Saturn papers in that edition of Nature, Augustin Sanchez Lavega included me as a co-author (being a member of the IOPW team) while the 2nd paper by my Cassini RPWS researcher Georg Fischer, included me in the acknowledgments of his paper. The Science paper was by Leigh N Fletcher. et al "Thermal Structure and Dynamics of Saturn's Northern Springtime Disturbance" VOL 332 17 June 2011 pages 1413-1417. Leigh presented my visible light data side by side with the thermal data captured with the VLT. Have attached the relevant plate. It certainly gave me a warm fuzzy feeling to see my data presented with the VLT data in this manner with full credit given.