The Dutch Observatory

Jon Wood told me that the blogs today (18th) talked about a Saturn moon six pack.  Sky and Telescope showed that 5 Saturnian moons would be lined up.  Calsky identified 7, but Hyperion showed pretty far from the planet.  In addition, someone must have done a pretty good sky dance, because stability and transparency were better than anytime I recall for this year.  Here my composite of Saturn and an image of the moons lined up.  Made from the Dutch Observatory. 

Today, March 8th., is Saturn’s opposition, so Earth is right between the Sun and Saturn.  This is when the reflection of the sun’s rays on the rings is strongest and brightest.  This phenomenon is called the Seeliger effect.  Here two images of Saturn’s opposition taken 8 minutes apart around 4:00 UT.

Saturn’s opposition is only two days away.  You never know how the weather changes. So as the sky conditions were not bad, I had to get my image in, just in case….  Here Saturn at 2:53 UT on March 6th.  Note the light spot at CM329 in the STeZ.

Tonight (2/23-2/24) was the night of the Saturnian quadruple moon transit. The only transit visible from our location was the beginning of Titan’s transit with the moon as well as its shadow being visible against the surface of Saturn an hour before sun rise. However, the planet would be behind the trees at my house at that time. So I imaged Saturn as Titan was moving towards Saturn before the event. 

It has been cloudy and windy lately.  Tonight the transparency was better but the wind made the scope vibrate every now and than.  This image made just after 11:00 p.m. local time.

It has been coudy and windy but finally, the clouds gave way and the wind gusts slowed down.  Except for the high winds in the jetstream and the associated turbulence, the conditions were OK.  I was looking for the bright spot around CM 145, but at the time Saturn cleared the trees around my house, I missed it.  Titan however was in the FOV, which made up for it.

Tonight’s forecast was better in stability and transparency. So had to give Saturn another try before the weather would turn again.  The image taken just before midnight February 6, local time, shows a little more banding because of the increase in stability as well as transparency.

Well, January was shot for observations with the CPC because of a defective AZ motor.  The replacement motor sent was an ALT motor with cables which were too short to be used for RA.  So in the first week of February I got the correct stuff.  Saturn rose nice and around midnight I made a few images.  The stability and seeing started out being relative nice, but detoriated as the imaging went on.  And because the 23 degrees F.  made me wonder what I was doing out there. So I went back inside, instead of waiting for it to clear up again and try for more…..

Today is the third day I imaged the conjunction of Venus, the Moon, Jupiter and Mercury. I made a special trip to Charlie Elliott to get the same horizon which I had in the previous images and put the three days in one picture showing how the objects moved during the three day period.  The Moon looked spectacular next to Venus with Jupiter and Mercury sitting side by side just above the horizon.  What a way to say goodbye to 2008!!
(Click the image below to see the larger picture. Jupiter and Mercury are in the bottom/right of the images)

The moon is moving up closer to Venus and Jupiter and Mercury moved close to each other as they get ready for a great conjunction of December 31.  This image was made at Charlie Elliott the evening of 12/30/2008.  The sky showed large streaks of thin clouds, which moved in front of the Moon and Jupiter and Mercury.  In this image they all seemed to come through, but Jupiter and Mercury are very low in the sky.  From top to bottom: Venus, Moon, Jupiter and Mercury.