Saturnian Satellites positions (1996-2000)

These positions are compared to the ones computed with the Vienne & Duriez ephemerides (TASS1.7). The calibrated parameters of the CCD scale and orientation are determined by the comparison of their measurement coordinates with computed positions of four bright satellites of Tethy, Dione, Rhea and Titan.

A catalog of 913 differential positions has been obtained. Analysis of the data as inter-satellite positions shows that these observations of the above mentioned four satellites have root-mean-square residuals of 0.04 arcsec in the sense of (O-C) (Observed minus Computed). The positional measuring procedure is proved to be good enough to obtain a small dispersion in the observations for the major Saturn satellites.