HST UV Imaging of Saturn's Southern Aurora during Simultaneous Cassini Imaging of the Northern Aurora

On 17 Feb. 2005, one week after the AGU abstract deadline, Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations are scheduled with the Advanced Camera for Surverys (ACS) to image Saturn's UV aurora for a period of 5 HST orbits, or 8 hours, corresponding to 0.7 of one Saturn rotation. In the present epoch, observations from the Earth can observe nearly the entire southern auroral oval in sunlight, but none of the northern oval, due to the tilt of Saturn's axis. Over the same period, a Cassini imaging sequence will scan across the northern nightside auroral emission region from the nightside of the planet. This presents a unique opportunity to determine the relationship between the conjugate points in the auroral emission regions, along with charged particle and magnetic field measurements in the nightside Saturn magnetosphere. This campaign of observations will be presented in this paper, with a concentration on the HST images, along with scientific conclusions as appropriate.