Astron. Astrophys. Suppl. Ser. 136, 257-259

CCD astrometry of Saturn's satellites in 1995 and 1997

D. Harper ^1,2 - K. Beurle ² - I.P. Williams ² - C.D. Murray ² - D.B. Taylor ¹ - A. Fitzsimmons ³ - I.M. Cartwright ³

Send offprint request: D. Harper

1 - Royal Greenwich Observatory Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0EZ, UK
2 - Astronomy Unit, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK
3 - Astrophysics and Planetary Science Division, School of Mathematics and Physics, The Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland

Received November 2; accepted November 24, 1998

Abstract:

In this paper, we publish measurements of 1514 positions of the major satellites of Saturn made in 1995 and 1997 using CCD detectors attached to the 1-metre Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope on the island of La Palma. Analysis of the data as inter-satellite positions shows that the observations of Tethys, Dione, Rhea and Titan have root-mean-square residuals of $0\hbox{$.\!\!^{\prime\prime}$}08$ in 1995 and $0\hbox{$.\!\!^{\prime\prime}$}10$in 1997.

Key words: satellites of Saturn -- astrometry