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Saturn at close oppositionBack (31st December 2003) By Salvador J. Ribas On 31st December 2003, Saturn will be directly on the opposite side of Earth from the Sun. This situation means that Saturn will rise as the Sun sets, reaching its highest point in the southern sky at midnight and setting as the Sun rises. This phenomenon is what we commonly call opposition. Saturn will be, in this particular case, at the closest position for three decades.![]() (Courtesy of NASA, JPL and Caltech) Saturn spends 29.42 years travelling around the Sun, following a slightly elliptical orbit, which drove it to be at its perihelion (the closest position to the Sun) last 26th July. The close coincidence of perihelion and opposition dictates that on New Year's Eve, Saturn will be closer to Earth than at any time since December 1973. The ringed planet will be 1.2 billion km from the Earth. It will not be so close until January of 2034. ![]() ![]() ![]() Images from net surfers:Send us your photographs to the mail serviastro@am.ub.es!!!We will post them on this page so that everybody can contemplate them. The samples we have received at the moment are the following: Agrupació d'Astronomia d'Alella and members of the Department of Astronomy and Meteorology of the University of Barcelona![]() ![]() Processing: Xavier Redón (AAA) with the software Registax. Date/Place: 30th December 2003, Alella (Barcelona). Francesc Vilardell and Salvador Ribas (University of Barcelona)![]() ![]() Date/Place: 30th December 2003, Alella (Barcelona) ![]() ![]() Processing: Salvador Ribas with the program Iris. Date/Place: 21st January 2004, Alella (Barcelona) Jordi Torra (University of Barcelona)![]() ![]() ![]() Date/Place: 31st December 2003, Alella (Barcelona). Jesús Miguel Ríos Palacios![]() ![]() Processing: Jesús Ríos with the software Registax and Photoshop 6. The agressive processing with Photoshop implies the introduction of some unreal colours but makes possible to observe some details which would be invisible in any other way. Date/Place: 6th and 12th January 2004, Huetor Vega and Sierra Nevada Agrupació d'Astronomia d'Alella![]() Processing: Albert Ferrer (AAA) with the software Registax. Date/Place: 7th January 2004, Alella (Barcelona) Juan Carlos Casado![]() ![]() Date/Place: 7th November 2003 Back \ No newline at end of file | ||||||||
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