Saturn 15/12/2008 New Storm

[Quark (Trevor)]

Hi All,
A new storm has just formed in the atmosphere of Saturn.
It has formed in the "Storm Alley" region at Latitude 35 degrees Sth.

I imaged the region every 10 minutes from 17:00 UTC this morning. Attached are three RGB images, the storm is in each of them but very difficult to detect. However it is much easier to see in the Red Channel.

I have created an animation of seven Red Channel images taken over a 60 minute period that clearly shows the storm and rotation of Saturn.
It seems that I have spent a great deal of time this year staring at Saturn images, blinking pairs of images trying to eek out storm detail. When the storms are very large and Saturn is very high they are easy to detect but at lower altitudes it is a different ball game.

When I looked at these images through early processing there was the barest hint of some structure, heavy processing has revealed this new storm. I hope it lasts as long as the last one that formed in the last week of November 2007 and lasted for 71/2 months.

I am hoping Mike may be able to assist with uploading my animation of the storm, it is 1.3 Mb.

Regards
Trevor

[iceman (Mike)]

Nice work Trevor, looking sharp.
I was going to get up this morning but was too tired and lacking in motivation.

Email me the gif and i'll upload it for you, and i'll also show you how you can upload it yourself next time using the IIS FTP Service.

Cheers