The tilt of Saturn is now at the point where we can start to see moon transits for Iapetus. Over the next few years the other moons will start to transit as well.
Here's some info about this as posted earlier today by Dave Herald on the Canberra Astronomical Society list:
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Thought I should mention the star of a relatively rare occurrence in a couple of
days time.... And a challenge for planetary imagers.
When Saturn is near to edge-on, you get transits and occultations of the
satellites with the disk of Saturn. But because the orbit of Iapetus is highly
inclined (14 deg), such transits and occultations of Iapetus occur at other
times. And because the orbital period of Iapetus is long (79 days),
eclipses/occultations/transits are rarely visible.
We are just about to start a series of events for Iapetus. The first event is a
transit, which will occur on Oct 19, between 9h 58m and 19h 59m UTC.
The only other event this year is an occultation which will occur on Nov 27
between 13h 8m & 20h 44m UT.
The series will finish in July next year, with events on the following dates:
Jan 6 & 7 - transit and shadow transit
Feb 14 - Occultation D, and Eclipse R
Mar 27 - Shadow transit
May 5 - Eclipse D and R
June 14/15 - transit + shadow transit
July 23 - Occultation D & R
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Events involving Tethys start in Sept 2007
For Eastern Australian observers, the events that will be visible are:
January 6 12 14.3 8.Sh.E
February 14 12 21.6 8.Ec.R
March 27 13 0.4 8.Sh.E
