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Posted by: Stu Mar 17 2009, 09:06 PM

Wow... just... WOW...

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2009/12/image

Posted by: HughFromAlice Mar 17 2009, 09:32 PM

Yes, truly awe inspiring.................. vast space, loneliness yet the softness of Saturn's colours. And that 4 moon transit - how orange the disc of Titan looks and I love the way its shadow is stretched out as it nears the limb of Saturn at about 1 o'clock in the first pic of the series.

A must see if you like beautiful space pics.

Posted by: nprev Mar 17 2009, 09:34 PM

...un-be-LIEVE-able!!! The quad moon transit...what a shot!!!

Posted by: mhoward Mar 17 2009, 09:42 PM

Pretty amazing. Also see http://planetary.org/blog/article/00001878/ for a nice version and also an animation.

Posted by: HughFromAlice Mar 18 2009, 03:30 AM

Even more awe inspiring!! Emily said that she 'just threw it together' ... well, good throw!!!

Posted by: tedstryk Mar 18 2009, 09:44 PM

I noticed that these observations were being made in the weekly updates, but I had no idea they caught a Titan transit.

Posted by: ugordan Aug 9 2010, 06:51 PM

I just noticed that during the time Hubble was observing the transits, Cassini also snapped some Titan shots. If you account for light time, there's a Hubble RGB set that's taken just 6 minutes after (green filter time difference) Cassini's RGB set. As the vantage points were very different, I thought they'd make for a nice juxtaposition if put side by side. The differences in distance, resolving power and Titan's appearance speak for themselves. Click image below for the image advisory page that has some more bits of info and numbers or http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4122/4876526240_04c3a40c73_o.png directly for the full-res view.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ugordan/4876526240/

Saturn's left ansa was clipped off the PC chip, but the planet's not the center of attention anway. Both instruments used pretty comparable filters and both composites were processed the same way I mentioned previously.

Posted by: nprev Aug 9 2010, 10:01 PM

Good eye, Gordan; interesting concept!

Really makes you appreciate the unprecedented abundance of observation platforms we have right now (at least old guys like me do!), as well as the talent of you imagewizards.

Posted by: elakdawalla Aug 9 2010, 10:31 PM

Another Gordan shot going straight to my blog I swear, Gordan, you do all my work for me! Well spotted.

Posted by: ugordan Aug 9 2010, 10:48 PM

Man, I wish all "work" was like this. I do this for fun! Hopefully, someone likes it sometimes

Posted by: jamescanvin Aug 10 2010, 07:54 PM

As Gordan noted that we are seeing practically opposite hemispheres, one of the first things to cross my mind was "In that case then where would Cassini have been in the Hubble shot?" After all they should be in fairly close alignment with Cassini behind Titan as viewed from the Earth. However a quick go with Celestia shows that space is big and they are not that aligned closely enough. If anyone else was wondering here is a Celestia screenshot:

Posted by: ugordan Aug 10 2010, 09:20 PM

Take note of the FOV size in your simulation - the entire screen is a shade under 2.5 arc minutes. In other words, the line of sight difference from a completely 180 deg angle is far less than one degree. I'd call that a pretty good alignment!

Scratch that, it doesn't work that way.