Iapetus Transits Saturns rings tonight (7th-8th Jan)

[ian musgrave]

Eastern and Central Australia will be priveliged to see a rare transit of Iapetus across the rings of Saturn (although eastern states are favoured). Transits of Iapetus only occur every 7 years, with only four or five events during these favorable times. The down side is that Iapetus will be very faint (magnitude 11) and the rings rather bright, and you will need a serious telescope to see Iapetus at all, even then you may only see it when it crosses the Cassini division due to the rings brightness (i'm not entirely sure about this).

Saturn rises at around 10:30 pm daylight saving time on Sunday 7 January in all Australian states. In Eastern states, Iapetus will enter the B ring at approximately 10:45 pm (daylight saving time) on Sunday, however, as Saturn is very close to the horizon, this will be impossible to see. At around 1:00 am daylight saving time in the eastern states, Iapetus will pass through the Cassini divison, between the A and B rings, and by about 2:20 am it will exit the A ring.

In Central states Iapetus is well into the B ring when Staurn rises, enters the Cassini division at around 12:30 am on the 8th and exits the A ring around 1:45 am on the 8th.

In Western Australia Iapetus is in the Cassini division around 11:00 pm on the 7th, being just above the horizon this will be hard to see. Iapetus exits the A ring a little after midnight.

[stephenmcnelley]

Thanks Ian, will be on line for it and be trying to get some kind of visual too.

[iceman (Mike)]

Ian, nice to see you on IIS.

Thanks for the reminder about Iapetus, I remember a post about it a month or so ago. Unfortunately it's unlikely i'll try for it tonight - the clouds are 1 thing, and the ability for my tracking to allow long enough exposures to get to mag 11 is pretty unlikely.

I look forward to seeing if someone like Anthony (Bird) with his 13.1" newt on G11 can pull something out. Hope he has clear skies.

Thanks again, hope to see you back regularly.

[ian musgrave]

Ian, nice to see you on IIS.

Thanks! I've been meaning to join for ages, but it's allways been one thing after another.

Anyway, the weather looks bad here too, but hopefully someone with a serious scope will be able to have a go.

Cheers! Ian

[Astroman (Andrew Wall)]

Yep way too cloudy here, would have been nice to get some captures from the societies 20" or the 30" scope of Ian bedfords . :O

Never mind there is always another 7 years

Welcome Ian to the forums also....

[bird (Anthony Wesley)]

I tried, but the rain washed away my attempt :-(

Bird

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Too much cloud here

[gaa_ian (Ian)]

Hi Ian, welcome to the IIS forum
Good to see you here !
Sounds like a real challenge, look forward to seeing some shots of the event.