天王星 ALPO-Japan Latest

Uranus Image 2017/01/15(UT)

Frank J Melillo,Milika-Nicholas
Frank,Milika-Nicholas

---

[Frank J Melillo  Holtsville NY U.S.A]

Here are images of Uranus from 15th January 2017 in fairly decent seeing.
The images reveal the broad N. Temperate dark band, the bright, thinner "band" around the EZ regions with more Southerly regions again darker...the dark N.P. "collar" within the brighter N.P. region of the disk, which we have consistently picked up in our images over time, is only hinted at by a dark smudge in the N.P. regions in these images. :)
We employed the iR685nm for these images. Uranus is getting very low for us here in South Australia as the information on each image reveals, 31 & 27 degrees respectively for these images. Nonetheless a considerable amount of detail is still revealed!
An animated gif of the 2 frames is also included - this seems to suggest some "details" are moving & consistent between each frame, although we have to be extremely circumspect about this sort of conclusion here! ;)
However, the thought has occurred to us that despite the fact that Uranus has appeared quite inactive with regard to storm/cloud activity since 2014 for amateur imagers...this "might possibly" have something to do with cyclical periods whereby in 2015 & this current apparition (primarily in 2016) amateurs have not been able to capture images whereby any activity is occurring..."might possibly' being the salient terms here! ;)
This is of course sheer speculation on our behalf but we will endeavour to image Uranus for as long as we can in the hope that further images might reinforce this speculative appraisal - or alternatively, refute it... 





[Milika-Nicholas:Adelaide,South Australia]

ALPO-Japan Latest Uranus Section	2017/01/16
	2017/01/02