[Quark (Trevor)]

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