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The 1995-1996 Saturn Ring Plane Crossings

The Sun and Earth passed through Saturn’s ring plane in 1995 and 1996, providing a unique opportunity to observe Saturn’s faintest rings and smallest satellites. The edge- on viewing geometry also permited direct observations of the main rings’ thickness, and the timing of satellite eclipses and mutual events that can be used to improve ephemerides.

The Ring-Moon Systems Node has prepared data sets from several of the observations made during the RPX observing campaign. These are summarized in the following table which also provides links to the data.

Accessing Saturn RPX Data

  • Note: Only those volumes showing a status of “Archived” have fully completed the PDS peer review process.

  • Clicking on the VOLUME_ID will allow you to browse the volume.

  • To download an entire volume, right click on that volume’s “Bundled” link.

The bundled volumes are provided in .tar.gz format. For information on opening files of this type, click here.

Telescope Volume ID Bundled Volumes Status Date
Hubble Space Telescope (HST) RPX_0001 RPX_0001.tar.gz Archived 2000-03-10
Hubble Space Telescope (HST) RPX_0002 RPX_0002.tar.gz Archived 2000-03-10
Hubble Space Telescope (HST) RPX_0003 RPX_0003.tar.gz Archived 2000-03-10
Hubble Space Telescope (HST) RPX_0004 RPX_0004.tar.gz Archived 2000-03-10
Hubble Space Telescope (HST) RPX_0005 RPX_0005.tar.gz Archived 2000-03-10
William Herschel Telescope (WHT) RPX_0101 RPX_0101.tar.gz Archived 2004-04-02
NASA Infra Red Telescope Facility (IRTF) RPX_0201 RPX_0201.tar.gz Locally Archived 2009-01-05
Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) RPX_0301 RPX_0301.tar.gz Locally Archived 2008-02-18
Wisconsin-Indiana-Yale-NOAO Telescope(WIYN) RPX_0401 RPX_0401.tar.gz Archived 2010-11-23

The Ring-Moon Systems Node will also archive other ring plane crossing data sets from those observers willing to provide them. For more information please contact us.

More information on the 1995-6 Observing Campaign