Satun's back...with spots!

[Paul G. Abel]

Greetings All!

Here is a drawing of Saturn I made on the morning of Friday 17th at 0449UT. This marked the end of my long cold observing session!

Saturn disk looks much the same as last years with various muted shades of colour and features, the NEB was probably the darkest feature on the disk. Also present was a white spot which is close to the proc. limb in the drawing below. There are a number of storms on Saturn at the moment, so it's woth getting up early to get a drawing of them!

Rings are much wider now, and I think we are in for an interesting apparition!

Best wishes,

-Paul.

[Paul G. Abel]

larger version:

[saturn5]

Superb drawing Paul,well worth braving the cold conditions for.

[moocher]

Always a delight to see your sketches Paul. Such alot of detail!!!!

Alan:D

[DarkerSky]

Nice one Paul. Fantastic detail. Saturn seems to hold a bit more promise this appartion. Good stuff!

[chrisrnuttall]

pesky clouds, i got up at half five and it was totally cloudy!

Interesting to see just how obvious that storm is visually, I have only seen David Gray's drawings so far and he has a bit of a whopper of a scope!

Nice one.

[Paul G. Abel]

Thanks all!

We have three white spots on Saturn at the moment:

The first and most dramatic is to be found at CM3: 260. This is a very large spot, very rare and it seems to be evolving so do get a look at it.

Two others which are smaller and fainter- one at CM3: 29 (seen in the drawing above) and one more at CM3: 248.

These spots provide real clues into the behavior of Saturn's atmosphere, which is normally largely obscured by fog and haze, so don't just draw them, make Central Meridian timings and intensity estimates. Don't forget to send your observations to the APLO and the BAA Saturn section.