Pish...day after day sitting at work, pressing the refresh button while waiting for someone to answer the phone and yell at me, and finally the wait is over. With our mysterious Raw Image Page code monkeys back to work after what I'm sure we all hope was a fine holiday, at last we gaze once again upon the face of Tethys, a moon that's likely sick with envy for all the attention her diminutive plume-blastin' brother has enjoyed lately. Here's the 24 November encounter mosaics combined in a slightly fictionalized format, with all the usual positional errors and distortions. Don't come crying to me if the Ice Dingoes eat yer baby because you camped in a duplicate crater I made.

The images in my earlier posts have been modified, because they were terrible. The evil trolls of UMSF were using them to promote ideas contrary to the valid goals and purposes of this forum ( IE, accuracy), so I corrected them hastily. The Enceladalosians are pleased with the results, so we invite you once again to view the fantastic and fanciful images of The Cassini free from the vile influence of Strong Drink and Pilates. Enjoy. Responsibly.

A few asides from the peanut gallery...for the iceball-obsessed crowd, myself included, I think we've gotten a virtually miraculous tour and XM. I'd like to see another reasonably close pass at Hyperion from a different perspective, a couple more close views of Dione's cliffs, preferably in low sun, and as many visits to the various rocks as are possible. Another Iapetus encounter is probably out of the question. Gapfill imaging of the north polar regions of each world would be nice wherever possible as well. In the XM, we have high-resolution coverage of the poorly imaged leading hemisphere of Enceladus, the fractured side of Dione, Rhea again, and Herschel on Mimas to look foreward to already, not to mention the Helene flyby and a few decent nontargeted encounters. A few more SAR swipes at Titan would give us 50% coverage in the long term, and maybe complete IR coverage of the emerging northern hemisphere. I'm inclined to support the long option, with the primary focus on atmosphere and rings, especially in light of the ugly financial picture. It would be cool to see those ring-shadows spread again, and watch the south turn blue.

Odds and ends...this is ridiculously inaccurate, but I'm sure the more talented among us can do something better (hint hint Don Davis )




Just for laughs, here's a real oblique view of the northern cratered terrain that seems to have been lost from the first close pass back in February '05.

Bottoms:

Ruh Roh. Not anymore.

I'd like to include (a) crop at full resolution for wallpapers and such. Even at reduced scale, the the boulder-y surface texture over this area comes out well with such broad coverage. Tops:

Howdies, everyone!

Back again from the grave once more with a composite of the high-resolution imagery from both Revs eighty and ninety-one. The backdrop is a greyscale version of VP's orthographic mosaic from the August encounter.His mosaic of the four sharpest frames from the Halloween pass is incorporated as well for additional accuracy. I've excluded the two frames centered on the unnamed canyon to the north of Damascus Sulcus, and included the WAC frame from August that's misssing in Emily's map. Much thanks to both Emily and Jason for making this easy. Enjoy!

PS: These have to be some of the best images in the history of planetary exploration...repeat kudos to the ISS team for another miracle.

Great points from Doug and Wayne Hale's blog...I love his self-description as a "shuttle hugger". I'm admittedly torn on many accounts, have a not-so-closet emotional attachment to this vehicle from childhood, and would love to see it keep flying for a spell...but the safety, component, and technical considerations seem insurmountable for more than a few extra missions beyond the 2010 date. The AMS should fly on the proposed 134 mission if the right parts are available, but beyond that...

As a side note, I hope this often flawed but beautiful partnership can continue irrespective of the current difficulties. The plotline of "2010" suddenly seems prescient again.

Sorry to break with PDP8E's excellent suggestion to keep this potential powder keg limited to real news, but I've watched this development with ears perked up, and was excited to find this thread here.

I propose the remaining orbiters be converted to pedicabs. Thirty bicycles on each side of the fuselage should be enough to get one up the hills of Seattle or san Francisco. They can be amphibious like the tourist "Ducks" to meet Greg's suggestion in the middle.

*&%#$@in' amazing, Gordan! You have no idea how many times I've premptively edited posts (or avoided making them altogether) to avoid the expletive-induced banhammer on account of your work. I did a preliminary overlay of your color product with my fake Saturn backdrop (derived from your WAC composite from the same flyby) and the western dark sliver of the mosaic from my attempt, and the alignment is decent. Mind if I post the hybrid in a few days?

That equatorial band looks prominent and very real in stretching this image.

Here's the parting global mosaic , with the poorly registering Saturn backdrop replaced. 24 clear filtered images are used, with one WAC image plugging gaps in the western limb.

ISS_049RH_REGMAP001_PRIME:

He's late, again. I'll tear myself away from waiting long enough to state that there's a teensy tiny Peter Kropotkin lodged inside Izanami basin. (PS: he's almost as dead as Rhea) Pffff...your Enceladus products are merely accurate, beautiful, and scientifically useful distractions from both my beer and my caffeine-fueled and morally superior DIY Enceladus finger paintings. I will now crawl off and yell at the cat.

WOOHOOO!!!!. I vote for all of the above. I hope they were competent cocktails. Dione and I are headed down to the Crescent for Karaoke Assault Squad and "Why Did You Bring that 1100km-Diameter Iceball Into Our Bar?" Night. Regardless, (don't?) drive safely, and I need to find pants. Poof.

Just a few odds and ends before I sign out...too tired (ahem) to finish up the parting global mosaic. Yeah, the one with Saturn's big yellow butt in the background. I hereby throw down ye olde gauntlet to ugordan to complete or collaborate on That Thing. If the backdrop is somewhat consistent, it would be freaking stunning. A clear filter version should be posted here soon.

Sorry for being lazy/absent/ugly/electrocuted/ect. I lurk religiously and post stingily. Except for today.

For Doug and admins: (Politics, politics, politics {urp}, politics, politics, random pop-culture reference, image, politics, image, politics, politics, BLEEEARGGGHHH!!!, pentinence....{hiccup}, politics. And thanks for running the forum. Yes, I will get an image hosting account somewhere.

There's a scarp in the middle of it all.

The last of the three high resolution observations was taken at roughly 25.000 km. It's a south-to-north transect of a region just to the southeast of the unnamed basin adjacent to Tirawa (whew...you're probably just ast lost as I usually am after that).
Wherever that happens to be, the southermost (bottom) frame has what might be a spectacular crater chain or graben. I'll bet on the latter. Two images from the global mosiac are included to the left for context.

ISS_049RH_HIGHRES001_PRIME (part 2)

Here's poster showcasing all the currently available products from this flyby with *&%#@(!!) Ray Crater in view. I stole ugordan's fantastic distant color rendition from his flickr page. (psssst....I'd like to see that whole mosaic in color sometime. If anyone can do it, it's you.) The closeup view in the upper right corner begs a few questions...."Is all that powdery craterless freshness landslides? What's up with that peppering of tiny craters near the central peak? Are those layers in them thar walls?"
On that note, where does the time go?

Thanks, VP! I had the sinking feeling that much of this would never see the light of day, and they're such nicely done sequences. ISS deserves another batch of cookies.

Possibly the highlight of the encounter, the huge 14-footprint mosaic and stereo views of the very prominent (and hopefully soon to be named) ray crater are truly astonishing. This may be one of the best observations of the PM, and nicely compliments the single frame of it accquired during the previous close pass in November 2005. Here's the eleven shots comprising the mosaic portion of this sequence. Keep in mind that limitations imposed by: a)software and : exploitcorporations' alcohol consumption results in distortions of perspective and position. I take no responsibility for you getting lost and your oxygen bottle running out.

ISS_049RH_HIGHRES001_PRIME

Just past the point of closest approach, the spacecraft captured the first of three high-resolution sequences, this one near the terminator as a ridealong with CIRS. The westernmost image shows the deep, angular, relatively fresh crater visible near the center of the crescent mosaic. It features lobate landslide flows and a few sharp linear grooves. These were the closest views of the encounter, at roughly 8600 km. A simultaneous wide angle frame is used for context. Gorgeous detail!

ISS_049RH_HIRESMAP001_CIRS:

The 20-frame Saturnshine attempt seems to have been smeared into uselessness, but a few bright spots remain. Three of the images are fairly clean, providing the best view to date of a portion of the Izanagi basin and the nearby curious linear feature as well as a few of the icy cliffs in the north. This is complete composite of all 32 footprints.

As Cassini approached between 66,000 and 48,000km from Rhea, 32 clear-filtered frames were accquired of the sunlit crescent and the nightside illuminated by Saturnshine. The 12-frame crescent mosaic is as far as I know the largest of the crescent views taken by ISS during the prime mission.

ISS_049RH_CRESCENT001_PRIME:

In the excitement leading up to the Iapetus flyby twelve days later, the 5000 km-range nontargeted Rhea encounter (49RH) recieved relatively little attention here. As we all know, Rhea is the most dynamic and thrilling of the worlds in orbit around Saturn, and I'm certain that the short shrift it's been given infuriates you all to the point of aneurysm. A combination of sucktastic downsampling on the raws page, smeared Saturnshine, and equatorial-ridge envy doomed this beautiful visit to oblivion. As I've had the pleasure of taking a day off to play with these (thanks Emily for that awesome Selected ISS Data page!) I'm proud/drunk to present The Forgotten Flyby.

For better visibility of the smaller footprints, here's a blowed-up section of the mosaic.

Here's the Skeet-Shoot mosaic in context.

Effin' aststonishing ...congratulations and thanks to the ISS team.

Here's a stitch of the 8-frame south polar mosaic at reduced scale.

Using VP's awesome new map, we can revisit PIA09035. All those noodles are starting to make me hungry.