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
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Note: Only those volumes showing a status of “Archived” have fully completed the PDS peer review process.
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Clicking on the VOLUME_ID will allow you to browse the volume.
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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 |
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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
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On-line facilities from the 1995-6 observing campaign are still available but no longer supported. Included are diagrams, planning tools, ephemerides and workshop proceedings.
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Proceedings from the 1994 planning workshop in Tucson.
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Announcement and Program for the 1997 Wellesley Workshop.