Saturn August 5th 2023

[Quark (Trevor)]

Imaged Saturn August 5th targeting a transit of the –55 long lived red spot. The spot was at the CM very early for me with Saturn quite low however I was able to resolve it. As it happened Tethys was also in transit but near the P limb. My data from this session covers 3 hr 50 min of Saturn rotation so a significant proportion of it’s circumference.
All data has been uploaded to PVOL with links here to the animations

Detail resolved in these data.
A faint white oval at approx Lat+37.1 L3 147.7 resolved in IR, R and RGB.
A bright slightly elongated spot just below the ring shadow at approx Lat-18.9 L1 77 resolved in IR.
Tethys in transit at approx Lat-42.6 L3 59.2 resolved in IR and R.
Long lived red spot approx Lat-56.2 L3 89.3 resolved in IR.

http://pvol2.ehu.eus/pvolimages/satu...85nmIR_tba.gif

http://pvol2.ehu.eus/pvolimages/satu...5-11_r_tba.gif

http://pvol2.ehu.eus/pvolimages/satu...27_rgb_tba.gif

Regards
Trevor

[Saturnine (Jeff)]

Great set of images Trevor, impressed by the fine detail you can manage to pull out.

[Dave882 (David)]

Great images Trevor. Some interesting features resolved

[Quark (Trevor)]

Thanks very much Jeff, Saturn is my specialty, could say obsession and I have been doing this seriously since finding my first SED's related electrical storm back in 2005.

Thanks very much David. With Saturn because small scale detail is so difficult to resolve movement is key. So multiple data sets over time when blinked will reveal such detail. I am in the habit of marking up the data sets I use in my animations then cut out the globe of the marked up image and pasting it in to the unmarked version of the same data set that I send to the professionals I work with as an inset. I take great care in positioning the insets in the exact same relative position such that when image pairs are blinked the marked detail in the insets will move which is a great help to the researchers. As I position the insets regardless of wavelength in the same relative position it is possible to blink data sets of different wavelength that are close together in time to get a handle on the whole picture of what is happening at different depths within the atmosphere.
With Saturn the majority of the small scale detail is best seen in IR and R data. If the seeing is very good then some of that detail is seen in RGB but not resolved to the level of the IR and R. Methane also is very important as it is an indication of the height of a feature.