Imaged Saturn July 27th covering 2 hrs 28 min’s of Saturn rotation. This adds to my July 25th Saturn data covering 2 hrs 16 min’s of Saturn rotation along with my July 26th Saturn data covering 2 hrs 46 min’s of Saturn rotation. This has been my first opportunity this apparition for three consecutive nights of good data with each night capturing data over quite extended periods.
These data complete a hi-res survey of the state of Saturn’s atmosphere as at the end of July 2022. Of course I was driven to do this in an attempt to recover the long lived AV. My final data set of the AV was in November 4th 2021 where it was quite well resolved; sadly I have seen no evidence of the AV this apparition. Maybe it still survives but is beyond the resolving power of my telescope, I guess HST OPAL will determine this.
My July 27th data is quite interesting with great depth of resolved small scale detail, the best of the data is exceptional.
Both my 685nm IR and RGB polar maps define the north polar hexagon surprisingly well.
I note a bright ripple on the Southern edge of the NNTeB at approx Lat+48.1 L3 46.2, a large elongated bright feature Lat+30 L3 89.2 Note; in the best of the data there are at least another nine bright spots all aligned along the Southern edge of the NTrB either side of the aforementioned large elongated bright feature. Two prominent EZ ripples impinging up into the NEB are very well resolved at approx Lat+15.1 L1 334.9 and Lat+14.3 L1 308.
Of particular interest is the very well defined v-thin cloud band in the NEB parallel with and very near the border of the EZ /NEB that seems to be associated with the highest amplitude ripple. This cloud band extends across the full width of the planet in these data but I note that the brightest and widest section of this cloud band immediately follows the peak of the highest amplitude ripple.
I also note Southern hemisphere detail with a v-large well defined dark spot at approx Lat-44.5 L3 118.1 along with another dark spot at approx Lat-30.9 L3 93.4
Obviously I have a significant amount of data from this session; all has been uploaded to PVOL with links here to the animations.
http://pvol2.ehu.eus/pvolimages/satu...85nmIR_tba.gif
http://pvol2.ehu.eus/pvolimages/satu...5-21_r_tba.gif
http://pvol2.ehu.eus/pvolimages/satu...25_rgb_tba.gif
Regards
Trevor