Imaged the target region of the storm( around Long 4 degrees W Sys III) on Saturn last night, 1st July 2009.
This has been the first opportunity to do so since 19th June. Back then the storm was visible but not as bright as was the case on 11th June 2009.
My latest images were effected greatly by the Jet stream which was directly overhead at the time. This reduced the quality of the seeing to about 5/10. There is no hint of the storm in these images, they were taken at 15 minute intervals and cover the CM from Long 04 to 21 degrees W Sys III.
I have attached three RGB images plus an animation of those images.
The quality of the seeing was so bad that the lack of any evidence of a storm in these images or the animation would seem to not provide conclusive evidence that this storm activity has ceased. Another contributing factor to the quality of my images is just how close to twilight I must capture my data. The sky is still quite bright and the ambient temp drops rapidly throughout this period.
Even with my Peltier cooling system this creates problems. The cooling system has to be off for about 15 minutes so that the air currents it generates have subsided before my imaging. I have been running my cooling system for about an hour before hand, taking the mirror temperature up to 2 degrees C below ambient. Ounce I shut down the cooling system I then rely on the falling ambient to catch up with the mirror temp, providing a window of about 30 minutes when the mirror will be within the required + or - 1/2 degree C of ambient. When imaging later in the night or early in the morning this is not an issue.
There is a major High pressure system moving in over the next few days which should result in much better conditions for my next opportunity, which will be on Sunday 5th July 2009.
Before packing up last night I tried out my new Powermate on Saturn, admittedly it was moving into the top of my neighbors palm tree but the image scale it produced in a 16" f 4.5 optical system was incredible. Better than double that of my 3x Bintel Barlow. The seeing would have to be considerably better to use it effectively. At this image scale I would expect Jupiter to fill the field of the DMK.
