Quote:
Originally Posted by bird
Yes, I thought so too - problem is, I can't find one at that time... am I doing something wrong?
regards, Bird
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Hi Bird,
Have been checking it out with "The Sky" and as you say, none of the major moons are transiting the disk at the time of your captures.
It has to be one of the smaller inner moons. I think Atlas and Pan would be way to small to image but it could be Prometheus, Pandora, Epimetheus or Janus. Janus is the largest of these inner moon at 220 x 200 x 160 km.
I thought that maybe, the ephemeris generator might help and I called up data for these moons for the time of your imaging, however I am unsure how to interpret the positional data for them, relative to Saturn, you may have better luck. I have never had cause to use the moon data for Saturn before.
Regarding your animation, the movement of the moon seems well synchronized with the a feature at about Lat 35 Nth, which would be the moons shadow, however there is another feature at approx Lat 35 Nth that clearly precedes the moons shadow. This is most interesting, due to the differential rotation there appears to be special regions about 35 degrees Sth and Nth of the equator where the wind speeds reduce just enough for storm structure to form and survive.
Since Cassini has been at Saturn the rings have been tilted to the Nth so most of the storm structure has been imaged from Earth in the 35 Sth "Storm Alley region. However now the rings are closing they are giving us better access to the 35 Nth region. I suspect that you may have captured storm activity at both 35 Sth and Nth in these images. It will be interesting to see how Georg interprets this data and whether the current orbit of Cassini allows the RPWS instrument to provide data for this region.
Regards
Trevor
