Saturn by Cassini

A gorgeous photo tweeted yesterday.

 This image of Saturn shows the polar vortex, the hexagon and some of the beautiful rings.

The hexagon is a standing 6 lobed wave in the clouds formed by the powerful jet stream that circles the polar region.

Cassini is my favourite NASA mission!

That was a loooong drive

Yesterday Rosetta finally reached comet 67P/C-P (Churyumiv-Gerasimenko) after a 10 year voyage.
Launched in March 2004, it used gravity assists to swing through the system , including a close skim over Mars at an altitude of 250km in Feb 2007.
It is now a bit over 100km from the comet and will orbit using thrusters for two weeks, before closing in on the comet to about 30km where it will orbit gravitationally.
Then it will detach the lander...
Ooooooooooh :)

Moon Occults Saturn

Got to spot a not-to-common happening - on the evening of August 4th, the Moon occulted Saturn.
I missed the initial moving behind the Moon (Dad duties), but was able to set up Dobby for the big reveal.
The evening was very brisk, the previous two mornings being the coldest on record for some 16 years, but the sky was mostly clear and the seeing was good.
Enjoyed looking at the half moon for a while, snapping some pictures with the mobile at the eyepiece, and then enjoyed seeing Saturn start to peek over the lit limb of the Moon.
Swapping from the beautiful overview of the 25mm ep to the higher mag 10mm allowed me to try a few more pictures.
Quite a novelty, and a beautiful viewing session.